The Fruit Blog

Jackfruit article grumblings...

2011-05-29T03:39:00.004-04:00

I think I'm becoming the Curmudgeonly Fruit Lord, but this bugged me:

Philippines: Unconventional breeding yields sweeter jackfruit (Freshplaza)

The article talks about "unconventional breeding", as though it was some novel, exciting approach. Yet when you read further, it turns out that "unconventional breeding" consists of driving around and looking for good-looking plants. That's neither novel nor breeding. Selection is a part of breeding, but it's not all there is to it.

And then we're supposed to be impressed that it was "developed" in just three fruiting years. Except of course they didn't actually develop anything...just picked a winner from the existing options.

Oh, and hi.

2011-05-29T03:36:00.001-04:00

Good to see you all. Hope you've all been well. Things are fine here. Just stopping by.

Don't get your hopes up about lots of posts, though. Just getting a little something out of my system.

But you never know...

Plant Patents Bad for Innovation?

2011-05-28T23:12:00.006-04:00

I don't actually think so, but that's the conclusion of this story:

Roses Puncture the Case for Plant Patents (The Daily Yonder)

And the study it cites:

Did Plant Patents Create the American Rose? (NBER)

The idea behind plant patents, really all patents, is to encourage innovation. The concept is that if you provide developers of new varieties the means to protect and profit from their creations, you provide an incentive to put in the effort it takes to create a new variety.

This article cites a research project by the National Bureau of Economic Research, however, that claims that this has not actually been the case with plant patents, using rose varieties as an example. I don't actually agree with their conclusion, or the reasons behind it (and yes, I have a serious bias here: without plant patents I wouldn't have a job, a point I will return to). But allow me to discuss their reasons for a bit:

The number of roses registered by U.S. breeders actually went down when the plant patent law was enacted in 1931.

This is not surprising at all. Without a plant patent law, breeders depend on novelty and availability to drive purchases. For example, say you're a breeder, and you've spent $1,000 to develope three new varieties, A, B, and C. A is clearly the best, so you name it, say 'Agatha', and you sell it to your friendly neighborhood nurseryman for $1,000. He pays you that because he's hoping to attract customers as the only nursery featuring 'Agatha'. That may be the last you see out of it, though, because your nurseryman can now propagate it all he wants, and so can any one else who buys it from them. Pretty soon there really isn't any incentive for anyone to pay for anything but the propagation, because the nurseryman, his customers, and any other nurseries who propagated it from his customers, now have it. So you, the breeder, need to keep eating, so you release the next best, B, name it 'Brilliant', and sell it to your friend the nurseryman. This time he might not pay you quite as much, seeing as it's not as good a variety, say $750. And the same thing plays out--people buy 'Brilliant', people swap cuttings, rival nurseries get cuttings, and pretty soon you can buy 'Brilliant' anywhere. They buy it even though 'Agatha' was better because their only source of information on it is the nurseryman, who has no incentive to tell them anything about it and will probably hype the hell out of it, because he's got an exclusive for the moment. Finally, in dire need of cash, you release C, called 'Carbuncle', which kind of a crummy variety. The nurseryman thinks maybe a few people could be conned into buying, so he grudgingly gives you $250. And the cycle repeats. As word gets out, the fact that 'Carbuncle' is lousy becomes common knowledge, and pretty soon no nursery is growing it. 'Brilliant' seems to be okay, but eventually 'Agatha' is proven superior, and within a few years its really the only one of your varieties being grown.

Bottom line:
3 varieties released
1 variety proved useful
$1,000 made by breeder

Now say you're the same breeder, with the same selections, but you live in an alternate reality where there IS a plant patent law. You look over your three selections, decide A is clearly superior, name it 'Agatha', and march down to the patent office, prepare vast acres of paperwork, and get yourself a plant patent on it. Then you go to the nurseryman, offer him not just access to 'Agatha', but exclusive rights to propagate and sell it. This is worth a lot more to him than just a brief headstart, so he pays you, say, $10,000. You have enough money, that you even roll it into expanding your breeding program. You don't bother releasing B and C, because they don't have anything A didn't, and it's not worth the cost of patenting them.

Bottom line:
1 variety released
1 variety proved useful
$9,000 made by breeder

Alternately, if you felt like getting more involved, you could have sold various licenses to a bunch of nurseries, licensed propagation rights to them on a yearly basis, or charged them a per plant royalty (both of these are attractive in that they give you a continuous revenue stream to live off of).

Patenting will virtually always lower the number of varieties released, because there is no longer an incentive to try to sell as many varieties as possible as the next hot thing. Not only does the breeder win on this deal, but so does the public, who has fewer crap varieties to wade through. (The nurserymen might arguably have come out the worst of it, but there are probably efficiencies for them, as they don't need to maintain huge numbers of varieties or keep up with constant changes). The fact that good varieties have value more in keeping with their usefulness means there's an incentive to spend money and time to pursue innovative breeding procedures to produce truly outstanding varieties. Without patents, the best tactic is to throw as many things against the wall as you can and hope that a few stick. With patents, the best tactic is to release a good variety, so that its value has longevity, either to prompt a large upfront payment or years of royalties.

"Luther Burbank did very well without protection"

The above quote is from Fiorello LaGuardia, in the congressional debate over the plant patent act. It is also not especially true. While Burbank achieved widespread renown, which no doubt helped him sell varieties at a higher price than otherwise, he was never wildly rich. Considering that the man released dozens of varieties still grown a hundred years later (and many hundred others, see above), saying that he did "very well" when he seems to have managed at best a middle class life style, partially supported by public grants, seems a bit of a stretch. Also, his operation was always small, topping out at 22 acres, with a very small staff (sometimes just himself). Imagine what a man like that might have created had he been able to make enough money to pour back into his efforts and expand? We might still be benefiting from it.

Most early plant patents were roses

Even if you agree with the conclusion that fewer varieties is equal to less innovation, the study refers only to roses. They are extrapolating from this because of the sheer number of rose patents. However, the purpose of the plant patent law was not primarily to promote innovation in roses. In actuality, it was World War I food shortages and demands from farm states that triggered the pressures that resulted in the plant patent law, although some nurseries who produced ornamentals were certainly among the later proponents (these tended to be the large nurseries with connections to major breeders). The real motivation behind the law was to prompt innovation in food crops.

Most patents belonged to large breeding/nursery operations

Again, we come back to the question of what is actually produced that is of value. Because patents provide an incentive to produce better varieties rather than merely more varieties, the advantage goes to programs that can afford to take financial risks to produce truly superior varieties, by developing programs with real depth, rather than simply name seedlings. Yes, it raises the barriers to entry for small operations, but the reason why those barriers are higher is because the standard for varieties is higher. Isn't that what we want?

The decline in imported varieties after the enactment of the Plant Patent Act can be attributed to other causes

While that may be true, all that the authors establish is that any real effect cannot be measured in terms of the number of imported varieties because there are way too many confounding factors: they cite the Great Depression and World War II. To that I would add the great upswing in public plant breeding which came from the influx of returned soldiers, and federal dollars, to the Land Grant Universities. These produced public plant varieties which decreased the need for both imported varieties and domestic private breeding.

But this brings me to another point: Though most of the world did not have a plant patent law, the lack of plant IP protection in a world where other nations have it means that foreign breeders don't want their varieties to enter your country. This hurts both the breeder and the country without the protections. China is a pretty good current example. Although the government has recognized the disadvantage this presents for Chinese growers and have taken steps to enforce the laws that exist, for years no sane breeder has knowingly let his varieties into China, where they would rapidly and illegally be reproduced without significant recourse on his part.

Most new roses in the 1930's and 40's were bred from European roses

Um, so? Unless you could show that that continued to be true after the breeding programs that plant patents built had been long established, that's a meaningless fact. It gives the impression (as does the whole thing, really) that the authors really don't know much about plant breeding.

Less than one fifth of new varieties are patented

This is another point where I come back to the fact that roses are a really bad example to use here. A rose breeding program does not require the collection of highly accurate data. While there are certainly traits which can be better bred with real data, the critical property of roses can be assessed from a very small number of plants. Plus roses are attractive and nice to have around. This encourages a large number of hobby breeders. You don't see a lot of, say, hobby wheat breeders. A better measure might be the number of useful varieties patented...but useful becomes harder to quantify with an ornamental.

Old data

All the claims made in this paper are made on data 1970 and earlier. Much of it much earlier. Quotes like "Patented roses have no lived up to expectations," date to the early 1940's, when the patently would only have had at best a slight effect on breeding programs. Breeding programs are decades-long endeavors, and the impacts of the plant patent law are felt on a long term basis. Why would they basically discount half of the time since the law was passed? Some of the comments make me wonder if they are actually writing in the past... I find it very hard to believe that there has been no increase in private sector research expenditures on seed-propagated crop breeding since the passage of the PVP act in 1970. The Alston and Venner paper they cite acknowledges that the proportion of wheat acreage (once again, making sweeping conclusions based on a single crop) sown to privately bred varieties increased from 3% to 30% in the 20 years after the act passed, but that yield did not increase appreciably, and so they claim that PVP was used primarily as a marketing tool. I don't quite understand that claim, because a check with FAOSTAT shows an increase of almost 50% since the passage of the act. I know that's a simplistic measure, but the method they use to computer yield, on a state by state basis, seems to me to have certain issues as well...

The FAOSTAT info doesn't show big increases until the mid-80's, but like I said...breeding takes time. One wouldn't expect to see immediate effects of the law. Alston and Venner acknowledge this by saying that development time is 5-12 years, but this is only generation...the real impacts of re-investment in programs would come in compounding over generations.

But anyway, I'm off on another paper now...

I am a private breeder. My value to my employer comes in producing patented varieties. So obviously I have a vested interest here. My job would not exist without a plant patent law. Nor would the jobs of a vast majority of U.S. breeders. All that said, I am a huge proponent of public breeding programs. We need more of them. They need more money. They both build up the foundations on which private programs are built, and they keep up competition on private programs by preventing the development of virtual monopolies. However I think current developments towards the patenting and restricting of public program germplasm has severely damaged that system, and turn it into something frighteningly like the private programs, and losing focus on the scientific advancement and germplasm development that is a critical role for those programs. I don't blame the breeders in charge of those programs—breeding programs are expensive, and that money has to come from somewhere. I blame the institutions and governments that have starved those programs of funds.(But that's another rant...)

Pomegranate breeding and germplasm

2010-03-10T22:22:00.000-05:00

Just stumbled up on a review of pomegranate genetic resources:

Pomegranate Plant Material: Genetic Resources and Breeding, a Review (CIHEAM)

I'm feeling a little grouchy tonight because a nursery lost my tree order (including pomegranates) and now the ones I want aren't available from where I wanted them until next year.

This is pretty cool...

2010-03-09T14:41:00.003-05:00

A guide to plant breeding programs in 36 different countries, many of which I've never heard of. Who'd have guessed there was so much breeding in Algeria, for example? These are nearly all developing countries, and I think it's encouraging to see these governments devoting scarce resources to these efforts.

National Organizations and Programs
(Plant Breeding Knowledge Resource Center)

Update: To be clear, I've heard of the countries, but not the breeding programs.

Attack of the Mutant Cherries

2010-03-07T21:10:00.003-05:00

Okay, they're not really attacking. But they are mutant cherries.

I've been neglecting my friends over at the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog, but popping over there to catch up quickly turned up a fruit link:

Japanese Scientists Create Cherry Tree That Blossoms All Year Round (Telegraph)

These sort of "everbearing" mutations have proven useful in a variety of of other crops, including strawberries (which are near and dear to me), but this may be the only one I know of that was artificially induced, rather than naturally occurring. (That said I'm skeptical about the prospects for this variety--the natural cycle of a plant is a critical component of its adaptation, and throwing one element of it completely out of whack like this can have serious detrimental effects. That can be okay in something like strawberry, where you're going to replant it yearly, but on a tree, the results can be a problem.)

Mutation breeding has a long history, though, and in fact one of the more important examples in fruit was also in cherry: the development of self-fertile varieties.

What this strawberry needs is a name that says "dry and sandy"...

2010-03-07T14:24:00.004-05:00

The University of California strawberry breeding program (the southern branch, based in Irvine) has released two new strawberry varieties, Benicia (formerly C225) and Mojave (formerly C227).

The southern California strawberry industry is kind of hurting these days, with increasing yields and increasing acreages (as well as competition from Mexico and elsewhere) pushing down prices and cutting into profit, so I'm sure these will be welcomed, though the last release from this program, 'Palomar', has not really caught on.

I've tried these varieties, when they were in limited trials, and I have to say I don't see any of them really setting the world on fire, though. The flavor was definitely better than 'Ventana', which is the current standard, but didn't exactly knock my socks off, and the fact that they're actually talking about how soft 'Mojave' is seems like a bad, bad sign. I'll take anything that pushes the quality standards above 'Ventana', which is an insult to strawberries, but since yields appear to be no higher they're not likely to be much of a fix for what ails the industry.

(And yeah, I've got a certain bias here, but I call 'em like I see 'em)

There's much more info on these in this presentation, but they're not named yet, so just look for the testing numbers (poor C226, so close to a shot at the big time).

Rearranging the furniture

2010-03-07T14:15:00.003-05:00

It just dawned on me that I had several fruit blogs in the "Fruit-ish Links" section, even though I had a perfectly good "Other Fruit Blogs!" section, so I moved 'em. Don's Cold Hardy Citrus Blog kind of doesn't look like it's a blog anymore, but I moved it and I'll sort that out later.

The Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog is a blog, but not a fruit blog, so I'm keeping it where it is. Still probably doesn't make any sense, but oh well.

I briefly considered alphabetizing, but I don't have that kind of ambition. Please don't read anything into the point at which your site appears in the list--it's wherever was most convenient to insert it at a given moment, not a ranking or a measure of my love.

And yeah, I know this doesn't really require a post and that no one cares about the links and their arrangement. But by posting this I'm maintaining the illusion of frenetic burst of activity on this site!

Forest Gardens of Pitaya

2010-03-07T14:02:00.002-05:00

There are times I think that this would be a pretty good blog if all I did was parrot all the fruit posts from these guys. And there are days when I think it is all I do. But it's still good stuff:

The Forest Gardens of Quintana Roo (Nourishing the Planet)

I've had some mighty good pitaya in Central Mexico, and I posted about the first time here.

Oh man! A new banana from Oman!

2010-03-06T22:58:00.002-05:00

Another find from the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog...

Mystery Cultivar from Oman (ProMusa)

I was kind of surprised that there are abandoned oases full of bananas in Oman. I would think there'd be a shortage of arable land in that part of the world. But what do I know?

Does Queens have Terroir?

2010-03-06T20:59:00.002-05:00

That's Queens, the New York borough. The climate might actually be okay--the other end of Long Island actually makes some decent wines.

Queens's Napa Valley (Wall Street Journal)

Trees of Endangeredstan

2010-03-06T20:22:00.003-05:00

Central Asia is possibly the region of the world least on most people's radar (despite its proximity to that perennial focus, the Middle East), but it is a center of diversity for many, many fruit crops, and as such has genetic resources which could prove critical for future breeders of such things as apples, almonds, walnuts, peaches, pomegranates and many other crops. It also has environmental degradation, unstable governments, and widespread poverty, which threaten those resources, many of which have never made it out of the region thanks to nearly a century of Soviet rule and isolation.

Flora & Fauna International has compiled a "Red List" of endangered fruit and nut species in the area. Critically endangered species include pears, hawthorns, currants, and barberries. Some of these things are down to a single tiny population.

Red List of Trees of Central Asian

An interesting read about a bunch of species I at least hadn't heard much (or anything) about.

A Life of Apples

2010-03-06T00:36:00.002-05:00

Seems like I spend a lot of time talking about apples here, which is sort of odd, considering that I've actually never worked with them, and I talk much less about some of the crops I have worked with. But part of why apples keep coming up is that they seem to possess a special place in our culture and our history.

During my months away from this site I stumbled across an apple blog, which I read for a bit, planned on posting here, and then promptly forgot about it as work and travel took me away from the Internet. Then today I realized that the "Chris" who commented here the other day is none other than the author of that blog

A Life of Apples

A Life of Apples features a number of profiles of cultivars, all interesting and well done, which is how I found it, but also touches on the historical and mythological aspects of apples, as well as yoga, recipes, and more. A definite addition to the sidebar.

Thanks...

2010-03-03T18:25:00.003-05:00

Aww...thanks guys. It's nice to feel missed. I can't make any promises, but as spring starts to sneak up I feel myself thinking more of the wonders of the fruit world beyond my own job...

Oh, and Adam...just call me "Evil". I consider us colleagues.

And Japanese Comment Spam Guy...thank you for standing by me through all the unproductive months. While other people remained silent as I posted nothing, you kept up a steady dialog with yourself and all those people who would click on a random link labeled "SEX" in the midst of a block of Japanese. Thank you for steadfast faith in my blog and the fact that I was far too lazy to delete you on a regular basis.

(Blogger appears broken at the moment, so you get this as a post, not a comment).

In the meantime, have another Canadian 'Red Prince' article.

How do you like them apples? (Canadian Business)

More later, promise.

The Red Prince (or: Just in case you thought I'd died)

2010-02-24T14:56:00.003-05:00

Just came across this article on a new(ish) apple variety and thought it was kind of interesting...always happy to see these sort of things appearing in the mainstream press, even if it comes with the obligatory discussion of HoneyCrisp which I'm getting a tad tired of.

The invention of an apple: The Red Prince (National Post)

Sorry to neglect things around here...maybe this will be the start of a resurgence?

The Almond Doctor

2009-09-13T16:25:00.002-04:00

I'm always pleased when I stumble across single-crop blogs. This morning's discovery is The Almond Doctor, by University of California Cooperative Extension Farm Advisor for Merced County, David Doll. Apparently there are 102,000 acres of almonds in Merced County, which is absolutely mindboggling! The focus seems to be primarily on pest and diseases, which gives it a very practical bent.

The Almond Doctor

Lanzones?

2009-08-23T23:36:00.001-04:00

I was just perusing The Scent of Green Bananas, and came across this:

Name That Fruit!: Lanzones (Scent of Green Bananas)

I have never heard of these things, but I'm intrigued. Anybody know if these are available in the U.S.? Meliaceae is the mahogany family...

TSOGB is basically a food blog, but so fruit intensive that I read it semi-routinely, which is saying something because my tolerance for food blogs wears out pretty fast.

Another pluot link...

2009-08-23T01:14:00.002-04:00

Just a quickie here...wanted to link to a pluot post by my friends over at the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog:

What I did on my holidays: The Pluot (Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog)

Fruit in Korea

2009-08-22T23:49:00.007-04:00

I never reported back on my trip to Korea, mostly, I guess, because I hadn't reported back on anything here in months until very recently. But rest assured that I did go, and I did come back, and I did eat fruit while I was there.

Most of what I encountered was not overly exotic, although I did get to try the bokbunja that was recommended in the comments. This is a wine made from Rubus coreanus the Korean black raspberry. It was tasted about like what you'd expect from a black raspberry wine, but with a more substantial kick than I'd anticipated. (Of course, it was followed immediately by a couple of beers at a noraebang, so that might have had something to do with it). I thought it was pretty good. Apparently it also helps with impotence and sexual stamina, though neither was really an issue on this trip.

We also had hallabong, a relatively expensive but very tasty citrus fruit grown primarily on Jeju Island. It's vaguely tangelo-like, released from a Japanese breeding program in the 1970's (they called it Dekopon, but the Korean ones are named for a mountain on Jeju). I've seen a couple variations, so I'm not 100% confident in the pedigree, but the most probable seems to be:

Hallabong = Kiyomi x Ponkan
Kiyomi = Miyagawa x Trovita
Miyagawa = Citrus unshiu
Trovita = Citrus sinensis
Ponkan = Citrus reticulata

(Citrus unshiu x Citrus sinensis) x Citrus reticulata.

(For those unfamiliar with the Latin binomials, sinensis is the sweet orange, reticulata is mandarin/tangerine, and unshiu is the satsuma or mikan.

Anyway, very good. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of it.

I did however get pictures of jujube (from a street market in Suwon):

And some asian pears, apples, and kumquats:

(I don't know what variety of apples they were, but it seemed to be the same variety everywhere. I had one and it was pretty uninspiring).

And some strawberries (there's also a few oranges and melons hiding in there):

(This seemed to be the only way strawberries were sold in Korea–in big styrofoam boxes. I think these were mostly 'Chandler', but I could be wrong (I'm pretty sure at least the ones I ate were). There were a couple of flats that might have been 'Camarosa' or something like that. They were even more shameless than US strawberry packers in hiding the bad fruit under the good, probably because in an opaque container it's easier to hide).

Also, though not a fruit, I also sampled bundagi, silkworm larvae:

(I sampled some of these later, cooked not fresh, and wasn't too impressed, though my cousin told me the ones we had were not especially good ones...)

Plumcots vs. Pluots

2009-08-22T20:42:00.003-04:00

Chip Brantley, whose pluot book I recently reviewed, has also recently penned an article on the distinction (or lack there of) between plumcots and pluots.

The Whole Truth About Pluots Versus Plumcots (Slate)

As I have mentioned before, I myself definitely favor "plumcot". I'm bothered by the idea of something trademarked becoming a generic term for something for which there is no real non-trademarked term, which would be the case if one insisted that plumcots are solely 50-50 plum-apricot hybrids (well, I suppose there's always "interspecific plum", but come on...). It restricts discussion and trade by people who don't hold the trademark, and it dilutes the trademark, so pretty much no one wins.

On a semi-related note, does anybody know the exact species make up of the "cherums" I've been seeing in the store? They've only come in big packages, so I haven't yet bought one, but they look pretty heavy on the plum side of things. I'd be stunned if some one could get any fertility of consequence in a cherry x plum hybrid without a bunch of backcrosses to one side or the other, but I'd be curious just which species they're working with. I'd wondered if maybe it was really a hybrid with the cherry-plum, Prunus cerasifera, but if you believe what little I've found online, it sounds like it involves actual cherries...

Mysticism and miniature fruit

2009-08-22T03:13:00.007-04:00

I visited the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum the other day (which, although I had originally worried it would be a weird cultish experience, was a really cool, professional museum, easily worth visiting for those with an interest in ancient Egypt) and came across this row of dwarf pomegranates along one wall. I didn't even recognize them until I saw the fruit, which was pretty obviously pomegranate-like. It gave the cultivar name as 'Nana', but I'm now thinking that's actually a botanical variety, and so there's got to be a cultivar name that goes with it (assuming they weren't just seedlings).

Anyway, I was delighted to find an unusual fruit growing there, and snapped a few pictures:

Fruit photos...

2009-08-22T02:15:00.003-04:00

I hadn't logged into my Flickr account in ages, but when I did tonight, I discovered I had been contacted by a user called "frutticetum". I don't know anything about Mr. (or Ms.) frutticetum, but I really like their collection of photos, which includes a number of pretty unusual fruits—Quinces, medlars, aronia, elderberries, many more:

frutticetum's Photostream (Flickr)

While I'm at it, I might as well link to one more. Spidra Webster is an occasional commenter (and I'm hoping still a reader) around here, and she's got quite a collection of fruit images on Flickr as well:

Spidra Webster's stuff tagged with "fruit" (Flickr)

Food Forward

2009-08-22T01:44:00.003-04:00

Sarah Spitz, from KCRW, sent along a link to Food Forward, an organization which harvests fruit trees in back yards and other locations and donates it to local food pantries. This is a great idea...many people (hopefully myself included, now that I finally own a decent chunk of land) tend to have way more fruit on their trees than they or their family will ever eat. Really, if you have more than a few good sized trees and don't have a huge family or a love of canning or fermenting, a lot of fruit is going to go to waste unless you give it away. A nice cause, and a good way to share all the unusual cultivars you've collected with the world. (From the looks of it this is a Southern California organization, but I'm not 100% sure. It's still a nice idea to donate your extra fruit to a food pantry, even if there's no Fruit Forward in your area...)

Smoothie Quest

2009-08-22T00:49:00.005-04:00

As much as I like to occasionally gripe about the selection of fruit in grocery stores, I have to say the number of interesting fruits in them has certainly improved in the last decade. My three year-old and I decided at dinner we were going to make smoothies tonight. We already had blueberries at home, and I had half a flat of strawberries from work in the car (I was planning an informal tasting of the five leading selections, which was cut short when one of my daughters wolfed down one clamshell's worth in a matter of seconds). So we headed to the store and went fruit shopping.

She made her old dad proud, choosing a really eclectic mix of fruits, each of which I sampled before dropping them into the mix:

Cherimoya:

Wow...I'd forgotten how much I liked cherimoya. The aroma is wonderful. And it worked really well in a smoothie. The only downside was digging out all those seeds (which are hopefully working on germinating right now...)

Honeydew Nectarine:

I had never heard of this before...and I really wasn't missing much. It tasted like a blend of really bland nectarine and underripe melon. It might not have been fully ripe, but the texture suggests it was close. Still, a pale yellow nectarine is interesting. (My picture is kind of washed out...oh well.

Golden Kiwi:

I've been seeing these for a while, but this is actually the first time I've bought one. Interesting that the shape and skin are so distinctive--if I had to guess, this is Actinidia chinensis, not the usual Actinidia deliciosa. It was pretty good, but nothing spectacular. It was a tad past its peak, I think, but it went into the mix just fine.

Manzano Bananas:

I really like these things. I probably should have waited for them to darken more (it does improve the flavor), but they're really good even at this stage. I ate one while I worked and gave the other to my daughter, so none made it in the smoothie (we bought some standard bananas too, which served just fine).

We also got blackberries (which my daughter had nearly reduced to smoothies already by the time we got them back to the car--she was enjoying shaking the bag vigorously), a nectarine, more standard versions of kiwi and banana, and an apple.

The smoothies were good and we got to discuss lots of different fruit species. How many three year olds do you know who can tell you all about cherimoyas?

(I didn't really have a point to this post, other than just basking in all the fruit I just bought).

The Perfect Fruit: Good Breeding, Bad Seeds, and the Hunt for the Elusive Pluot, by Chip Brantley

2009-08-16T01:12:00.001-04:00

The Perfect Fruit:
Good Breeding, Bad Seeds, and the Hunt for the Elusive Pluot
Chip Brantley
240 pages
Bloomsbury USA, 2009
List $25

What seems like an eternity ago, when I was still posting semi-regularly here, Chip Brantley contacted me about doing a series of fruit breeder profiles for his website, CookThink. Then a few personal crises intervened on my side, things got postponed, work picked up, and it never happened. But in the course of our conversation he mentioned that he was writing a book on pluots. I thought this was a pretty cool idea--there aren't many decent books on stone fruit, and certainly not on pluots specifically, and I said I'd like to read it when it was done.

That was probably a year ago. I'd honestly kind of forgotten about it. When you talk to serious fruit enthusiasts, you'll find that an awful lot of them are writing books about fruit. I think it comes from reading too many books about fruit. (For the record, in keeping with my obligation is a fruit fanatic, I'm writing a book, on grape breeders, or at least I was until my hard drive crash ate about half of it. I have to say my enthusiasm has waned a bit since). But anyway, I didn't necessarily expect that I would ever see the pluot book.

But I have to give Chip credit: not only did he write the pluot book, but he remembered my interest in it, and a couple weeks ago a copy appeared in my mail box.

I haven't been so pleased with a fruit book in a long time. It's not because it's the perfect book on pluots. I'd have written a very different book on pluots: more species info, more chromosomes, more history, more Luther Burbank. My book would have been twice as long, and it would have had lots of photos and tables, and probably nobody but me and a handful of stone fruit breeders would have been able to stomach reading it from cover to cover.

Brantley didn't write that, book, and I'm glad he didn't. Because this book does something else that no other book I've read has really done, at least not as well, and that is to capture what it's like on the inside of the fruit industry. The pluot is important to this story mostly because it's the central theme, but it in a very real sense, it's not what the book's about. The book is about the people and the business that have grown up around stone fruits--the breeders, the growers, the shippers, even the grocery stores. But one could have written the same story about strawberries, or apples, or citrus.

When people ask me what I do for a living, the next question (if there is a next question--I get a lot of blank stares of incomprehension) is what it is I do all day. And I dutifully try to explain, which inevitably entails a long complicated explanation of what it is the company does and how I fit in there and then I notice they're either losing interest or have wound up with one of those blank stares after all. This book is that explanation, only readable and interesting. For the people I really want to understand the business I work in, I will be recommending this book.

But even if you don't have a fruit breeder in the family that you're seeking to understand, I think this is still an important book, because so few people really understand the machinery that stands behind the produce they buy at the store. There's a lot of ignorance and a lot of misconceptions about agriculture and about farmers (there's virtually no misconceptions about fruit breeders, because hardly anybody knows we exist, though we do occasionally get accused of genetic engineering).There is a lot more complexity to the stone fruit industry than probably occurred to most folks, which is probably really the case with most industries. And as we follow both the development of the pluot and the players on the stone fruit stage, of the shifting loyalties and million dollar gambles, we start to get a picture of the constant balancing act these growers need to perform.

I've had so many conversations with people in which the grower is cast as some evil profiteer who cares nothing about quality, gleefully foisting crappy tasting fruit onto the hapless customers and cashing his fat checks. Many people don't seem to realize that the vast majority of growers want to grow good fruit. They want a product they can be proud of, that they can feel good putting their family name on. Unfortunately, many are working within the bounds of a system that doesn't put much value on quality, where price is dictated by volume and convenience. It's also a system in which margins are often slim, and the grower who chooses to emphasize quality but doesn't find a way to get paid for it sometimes can't pay his bills at the end of the season. (And sometimes it doesn't matter what they do--some seasons no one makes money).

Stone fruit have suffered a great deal in the current system, though perhaps not uniquely so. I didn't think I liked fresh peaches until I was 28 and in grad school in Arkansas, and I actually tasted tree-ripe peaches. A good peach is just about as good as fruit can get. Same goes for plums. I haven't had a plum I truly liked from a grocery store yet, nor even from a farmer's market, but I've had plenty of good ones out of people's back yards. Mass producing food is inevitably a compromise, but the stone fruit seem to have been more compromised than most.

The book ends on a hopeful note, that maybe this system is starting to change, and the pluot is held up as an example of how things are shifting. And I hope he's right. Certainly store-bought pluots have raised the bar for stone fruit. But I'm still continually disheartened by how many people just don't notice. People who will happily munch on the nine-month-old 'Delicious' apple and not notice the distinct resemblance to damp cardboard, or buy boxes full of half-green strawberries. I think somehow some of these people just like the concept of eating fruit in some way completely detached from the actual experience of doing it. These are the people who have set the tone for a long time. We have crappy produce in our stores solely because people like this will happily pay a reasonable price for them. If the only fruit people paid money for was good fruit, then there would only be good fruit in the stores, and growers would be paid to produce good fruit. That's how capitalism works.

As I have said, it's not as technically or historically focused as many single fruit books are, which was initially a bit of a disappointment to me. (It's worth noting that the Washington Post's review, while positive, thinks he gets too caught up in "long tedious fruit genealogies", so much of this is probably in the eye of the beholder). There's not a ton of science, beyond a basic explanation of how breeding is done and a brief overview of Prunus. Nor does Luther Burbank, father of the plumcot and probably the greatest plant breeder ever, get his fair share, in my view. Instead the star of this story is Floyd Zaiger, probably the closest thing to Burbank alive today, who took Burbank's idea and turned it into commercially viable varieties. I've wanted to write a piece about Zaiger Genetics for ages, but for now you'll just have to settle for this article or the Dave Wilson's Nursery catalog of Zaiger varieties, always an entertaining read in itself.

Brantley's writing is engaging, occasionally humorous, and infused with passion for his subject. His excitement about pluots has that slightly unfathomable quality that I find all good fruit authors have. In the narrative of his pluot research, I can see shadows of my own journeys of discovery into various fruit. Not everyone will get that, I suspect. But I also suspect most people, even those with no particular interest in pluots, will be taken by the string of characters Brantley visits in the course of his quest. The book is a quick, easy, and rewarding read, and I heartily recommend it to any one who eats fruit (which I would assume is essentially any one reading this blog).

You can buy it from Amazon and Barnes and Noble, among other places.

"Organic" does not necessarily equal "good"

2009-08-15T02:58:00.002-04:00

I was pleased to find this article in the LA Times today:

'Organic' Label Doesn't Guarantee Quality or Taste (L.A. Times)

This article nicely captures my feelings on the subject. I've got nothing against organic food. I eat a fair amount of it. A lot of it's pretty good. But you know what? A lot of non-organic food is pretty good, too. I bugs me to no end when people treat the organic label as though it's some magic talisman of awesome yumminess. It's just a label. A stunningly arbitrary label, actually. And one that doesn't take into account the vast majority of things that influence quality.

But I also have issues with the big company vs. small company bias lots of people, including this article's author, seem to have (but in the interest of full disclosure, I work for one of those big companies...though it's all relative--we're no Monsanto or Dole). In general, yes, big agribusiness has not done well by us in the flavor department (though to be fair, by constantly seeking to buy things for as cheap as possible rather than insisting on the importance of quality, we consumers have basically done it to ourselves), but there are many, many small farms that produce mediocre food too. And there are some big companies who produce pretty decent fruit.

Seedless guayaba

2009-07-09T01:39:00.001-04:00

I am in Mexico at the moment, back from an amazing dinner of steak, wine, and assorted organ meats. (I am writing this from my phone so I won't be my usual wordy self). I was speaking with a Mexican colleage and friend, and he told me an interesting story of fnding a seedless guayaba tree.

Several years ago, he discovered that his sister-in-law had a tree which bore seedless guayaba. When asked where it came from, she said that she had bought some seedless guayaba from a street vendor in Zamora, Mexico, and in them she had found a single seed, which she had planted and it had grown into a tree which produced seedless fruit.

My friend and his wife started asking around whenever they were in Zamora, until one day they found a fruit seller who had once sold the seedless guayaba. But alas, he no longer had them. The man who had sold them to him could no longer provide them. But he gave directions to where the man lived.

They drove out to him, and yes, he had once had a tree which produced seedless fruit. But a few years ago it had started producing seeded fruit.

After a little research, the mystery was solved. Turns out, the formerly seedless plant produces no viable pollen. The transformation from seedless to seeded coincided perfectly with the first flowering of some other guayabas the man had recently planted.

When propagated and planted in isolation from other guayabas, it once again was seedless.

Not earth-shattering perhaps, but definitely cool.

(And look...I finally posted! Happy now?)

Carte de Fruit de la France

2009-02-25T22:52:00.003-05:00

I don't have anything to add to this (which, like so many wonderful things I post, I found over at the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog), but that doesn't make it any less cool:

In case you're wondering, no, I do not know French. So the title above was entirely made up. And yet Babelfish tells me it's correct! I feel all cool and polyglot today. I also translated several things at work into Spanish (a language I at least sort of know) with only a few minor errors.

Update: I just had a reader mention that he's trying to track down a copy of the map, so probably I should provide some sort of a link beyond a vague indication of what website I found it in. I found it here, and they found it here, and apparently they found it here, which I can't read on account of the aforementioned not knowing French issue, but it looks pretty cool.

Korean fruits?

2009-02-24T00:40:00.003-05:00

I'm off to South Korea on Friday, for nine days, and would welcome any recommendations on Korean fruit I ought to try while I'm there. I know February/March is not prime fruit season most places in the Northern Hemisphere, but I'll try what I can. I've got a local guide, but he's not as fruit-centric as some people (such as me), so I don't want to miss something.

How do I get in on this racket?

2009-02-22T00:08:00.003-05:00

Apparently a Japanese grower is raking in big bucks for gigantic strawberries:

Berries, $841 apiece (Rockhampton Morning Bulletin)

Now, granted, it's 841 Australian dollars...that's only US$540. But still...

80 grams seems like a big strawberry, but I've seen several selections that averaged close to fifty, so I don't think it would be hard to get a variety with primary fruits of 80 grams, and at $841 apiece, one could afford to harvest the primaries and pitch the rest.

The statement about fructose is, in my opinion, off base, though. Although there is a relationship between size and sweetness, it's not a terribly strong one. Plus, fructose is not the only sugar in strawberries--in fact sucrose generally accounts for around half of the sugars, and glucose is important as well.

Weed control by guinea pig?

2009-02-21T23:47:00.002-05:00

Although I feel at least as fond of grapes as any fruit (they were the first fruit I studied), I must confess that most articles on wine kind of bore me, as they have a tendency to just rehash the same ideas about the same small set of varieties, while I would much rather focus on new varieties, or just drinking the wine.

Most of this is true about this article, however the image of eleven million guinea pigs patrolling a vineyard, along with a race of dwarf sheep, made me like it anyway:

Sauvignon strategies, some involving sheep (Financial Times)

Bananacasts

2009-02-07T15:40:00.000-05:00

The Voice Of America has five podcasts/articles (I have no idea if the articles and the podcasts say the same things, as I haven't made it very far into either at this stage) on bananas:

Banana Mooted As Top Crop In Africa (1 of 5)
Disease Threatens Banana Industry (2 of 5)
Top Trade Lawyer Doubts Feasibility of East African Banana Exports to Europe (3 of 5)
Governments and Global Businesses Urged to Help African Banana Sector (4 of 5)
Sweeping Reforms Needed to Improve African Banana Industry (5 of 5)

I've thought a little bit about doing a fruit breeding podcast, but I'm not convinced it's worth the bother.

No more Ziziphus zizyphus?

2009-02-06T22:26:00.003-05:00

Some of you may have seen this in the comments, but I figure I would elevate it to a more visible position. Reader Christopher Taylor (who, judging by his two blogs, is way more qualified to comment on systematics than I am) sent along the following article in response to my earlier story on the Latin binomial for the jujube:

Proposal to conserve the name Ziziphus jujuba against Z. zizyphus (Rhamnaceae) (Taxon)

As I have said before, my personal leanings in taxonomy are based solely on sentiment and entertainment value (though from an objective standpoint I can see the value of well-done taxonomy) so you know where I come down in this argument...

(Thanks, Christopher!)

Fruit Genetics Friday #8: Picking a Scab Resistance Gene

2009-02-06T03:04:00.002-05:00

I know the title is a pretty bad pun, and not even that accurate. Sorry. Anyway, here's the bit about scab resistance I hacked out of the draft on the WineCrisp apple:

The Vf gene comes out of a selection Malus floribunda. The original introgression of the Vf gene (or genes, but more on that later) was done by Purdue back in the 1940's, and has been used heavily in breeding, including as a fairly early target of marker assisted selection (a detailed history of scab resistance breeding is available from Purdue. I'll hit the highlights here.)

There are at least seven distinct loci governing resistance to apple scab, each named according to the original source (the "V" is for Venturia inaequalis, the name of the pathogen):

Vf - Malus floribunda
Vm - Malus micromalus
Va - 'Antonovka'
Vb - Malus baccata Hansen's #2
Vbj - Malus baccata ssp. jackii
Vr - Malus pumila R12740-7A
Vr2 - Malus pumila GMAL 2743

There are distinct races of the scab pathogen, though, and they react differently to the different resistances. Race 5 overcomes Vm, for example, while Race 2 overcomes the resistance in some M. baccata. In 40 years of breeding, no resistance breaking isolate of Vf was identified, but towards the end of the twentieth century reports began to surface in Europe of strains which could overcome Vf.

As I hinted before, it's probably more appropriate to refer to the Vf locus, rather than the Vf gene, because the Mendelian Vf gene is in reality a collection of genes. (Although I use it as much as anyone else (probably more), the word "gene" is actually kind of a problematic one anyway--it's really better to use "locus", to refer to a specific point in the genome, or "allele" to refer to a specific sequence at that locus.) Sequencing showed the so-called Vf gene to be a cluster of four genes, Vfa1, Vfa2, Vfa3, and Vfa4. Clusters of resistance genes aren't uncommon and have been shown in lots of species--it may be the extra copies strengthen the resistance by increasing expression, or allow a broader resistance by having multiple versions. It's also possible that resistance alleles are more likely to evolve from duplicated genes, because the plant can better survive mutations in a gene it already has backup copies of. In this case, Vfa3 has sustain some pretty serious mutation, and no longer produces a full length transcript. Although the similarity among the remaining four led researchers to suggest that all activate the same defensive systems, Vfa1 and Vfa2 (along with the partial transcript of Vfa3) are primarily expressed in immature leaves, while Vfa4 is expressed in mature leaves. Of these, Transgenic apples transformed with each of these apples showed that susceptible varieties expressing Vfa1 and Vfa2 became resistant, suggesting these two genes are capable of conveying resistance.

The Vf locus was really one of the first fruit genes to really be thoroughly investigated and described, from its introgression from a wild species, description as a Mendelian trait, and detailed dissection on the molecular level. Although other source of scab resistance are gaining in importance, and molecular tools such as linked markers developed to improve their usefulness to breeding programs, the Vf locus remains possibly the most studied disease resistance locus in any fruit crop. (I'm just speaking off the top of my head...Anybody think of any other contenders?)

50,000 visits!

2009-02-05T02:19:00.003-05:00

Just thought I'd note that the Fruit Blog scored it's 50,000th visitor today! (Or actually, it's 50,000th visit--I'm sure 10,000 of those are just me, over and over again, but I'm not going to quibble). Interestingly, the counter at the bottom doesn't register it...that thing has been out of whack with the internal numbers for a while. I should probably get rid of it, but I've gotten used to looking at it.

If you'd told me in 2005, when I started this thing, that I'd ever hit 50,000 visitors, I'd have laughed. That there's so many of you that want to read me random fruit-ramblings is both amazing and encouraging, and gives me hope that maybe I'm not quite as insane as some of my friends make me out to be.

I kind of feel like some sort of critical mass was accomplished in the last month or so--things seem to have really picked up in terms of traffic here.

Anyway, thanks again for showing up, and for all the contributions readers have made in comments and e-mails. See you at 100,000!

It's not as far north, but...

2009-02-04T00:29:00.004-05:00

...it's a heck of a lot colder than London:

Don's Cold Hardy Citrus

Granted, they're not looking at grapefruit, but I'm duly impressed with anybody who can get an edible Poncirus hybrid. A very cool site, and a good resource for those interested in breeding cold-hardy citrus.

The site is set up in reverse blog fashion, with the new stuff on the bottom, which I find unreasonably distracting and odd.

(Todd Wert, a friend of mine from grad school, pointed this page out to me).

Also, here's a fun-looking citrus page in German, one of the users' pages from the forum page.

Anyone know of any more northerly grapefruits?

2009-02-03T14:13:00.001-05:00

From the Home Citrus Growers site I recently discovered:

World's Northernmost Fruiting Grapefruit? (Home Citrus Growers)

Anybody know of anything further north than London (there's a claim for Porlock, but if you're going to make fruiting a criterion I think you have to actually ripen the fruit)? Really I think the UK is probably the only place with a shot at growing it this far north. I've seen some kind of citrus growing in a greenhouse in Iceland (I can't recall what it was) but I think to count it really has to be outdoors...where's the challenge in growing it in a greenhouse...even if it is an immensely cool greenhouse heated only by infernal depths of the earth.

Another honor from a site I've never heard of.

2009-02-03T03:18:00.002-05:00

Actually, I think it's essentially the same site, since the same person e-mailed me to let me know about it.

Anyway, it looks like we're in the top 100 Botany Blogs, too (#13 this time, though again it doesn't really look like a ranking).

(I kind of suspect their both just scams to link to as many popular blogs as possible to drive up traffic on their own site, which is one of those content-poor places you stumble across when Googling and wonder if anyone ever reads. However, regardless of the motivation, I am once again in good company, so I'm rather complimented anyway.)

You think this blog is overly specialized?

2009-02-02T01:39:00.006-05:00

Over and over again, outside of work, when I tell people about this site, their reaction is frequently: How on earth do you find enough to write about? At which point I could point out that I have on occasion gone months without posting anything, but the problem there is more one of being busy (sometimes) or lazy (more often) and not a lack of material. As any one who has actually had a conversation with me about fruits can attest, I never run out of material.

Still, it gives me a little secret pleasure every time I find a fruit blog more specialized than mine, especially when said blog is extensive and well-written. Granted that almost never happens. But here's one case where it actually did:

Adam's Apples

Adam writes exclusively about apples. In fact, he writes almost exclusively about apple cultivars, which he tastes, photographs, and describes with surprising regularity (several times a week, pretty much continuously since July). I've been meaning to post the link for ages but I don't think I have. Of course, I never remember what I've posted if I don't post it immediately after finding it, so for all I know I just post the same three links over and over around here. This one merits a link over on the side, as well.

Update: I've been digging through the archives at Adam's Apples, and came across this episode, which amused me:

The Adventure of the Scarlet Blush
Mystery Managed (The non-Holmesian conclusion)
Scarlet Blush, Conclusion (the more appropriate conclusion)

Now I'm thinking I need more fictional detectives around here.

Bizzarria!

2009-02-01T03:29:00.004-05:00

It's not hard to see why they named it "Bizzarria":

The Bizzarria Story (Home Citrus Growers)

I've seen a number chimeral citrus specimens before, but I've never seen the Bizzarria before. Apparently it's a graft hybrid of a sour orange and a citron. (Another much less spectacular citrus graft hybrid, Citrus neo-aurantium, can be seen here.).

This reminds me a little bit of the account of the "Sweet and Sour" apple in Apples of New York. Described as a probable graft hybrid, this apple had ridged fruit, with the ribs green and the space in between yellow. When eaten, the flesh in the green areas is tart and acidic, while that beneath the yellow skin is sweet and sub-acid.

Update: The more I poke around, the more I realize that the Home Citrus Growers website is pretty nifty as a whole. I'll add a link in the sidebar, too.

Another Durian blog

2009-01-30T18:02:00.005-05:00

Like all Durian websites, it's a bit odd:

Above Average: Durian Links and Information

Any fruit-related site that also works in a reference to Gigantopithecus is just fine by me.

Warning: This site will play music at you. Adjust your volume accordingly. I told you...the Durian people are odd.

The Native Papaw

2009-01-30T07:30:00.000-05:00

Someone on the NAFEX list forwarded on this link to an online version of an old USDA pamphlet on pawpaws:

The Native Papaw (University of North Texas)

Stern's Medlar, Revisited

2009-01-29T23:49:00.009-05:00

Way back in the Dark Ages of the Fruit Blog, back when I actually wrote long articles, I wrote an post on medlars, which mentioned Stern's medlar, aka Mespilus canescens. I've always been fond of Stern's medlar, mostly because I'm fond of outliers in general, and this thing is definitely an outlier.

The genus Mespilus has long been one of those single species genera, consisting only of M. germanica, the European medlar. So the discovery in 1970 of a medlar species, a hemisphere away from all other naturally occuring medlars, in Arkansas of all places, is certainly surprising. The fact that it exists only on one site, with only 25 individuals, that it only rarely flowers, and that it turns out to be triploid, are that much more unusual.

In fact, probably too unusual to be the real deal. A little while ago I had a great e-mail from Thomas Frothingham, who has worked with M. canescens, with an update on the latest thinking on the species. I'll repost it here verbatim, rather than just paraphrasing his whole letter for you:

I happened across your website today, and I thought I would pass along some information about the Stern's medlar. In a former job, I worked extensively with this species in situ, at the Konecny Grove Natural Area. There has always been controversy about the taxonomy of this very rare plant, but the latest thinking, based on the genetic analysis of the entire Crataegus tribe by Dr. J.B. Phipps [EFL: The paper is actually by Lo et al., not Phipps, though Phipps has been a prolific researcher in the field of Crataegus and Mespilus taxonomy], is this: the Stern's medlar is an accidental hybrid between The blueberry hawthorn (C. brachyacantha) and the European medlar, Mespilus germanica. I can send you the original article if you're interested. It seems likely to me that the germanica plants were brought to the area early in the 20th century, when there was an influx of immigrants from the area of the Czech/Austrian border region. The influence of these settlers is very evident today: the nearest community is the town of Slovak, there is an Eastern Orthodox church nearby, the nearest cemetery is named the Czech National Cemetery, etc. Also the area is still populated with people of Czech ancestry (the Konecnys, Orliceks, etc).

At one time the population of Stern's medlar was managed as one of the rarest tree species in the world. If the hybrid theory is correct, it may change that perception. On the other hand, the blueberry hawthorn is tracked as a species of concern, and has been extirpated from the Grand Prairie region of east Arkansas (the original prairie has been almost entirely converted to rice production). So the Stern's medlar is at least preserving some of the genetics of a rare species.

To answer some of the questions posted on your blog:

To my knowledge, the Stern's medlar is not available commercially. Any attempt to market it would have to take into account the ownership rights of the landowners (the Konecny Grove Natural Area is privately owned, managed through a conservation easement by a state agency. It is also not open to the public). The plant also has some limitations as an ornamental: the period of bloom is very short, and the flowers smell bad. It has so far proven impossible to propagate by cuttings or tissue culture, although I assume it could be grafted. The only reliable method so far is to carefully dig up the suckers from around the base of the parent plant. There are some specimens at the Center for Plant Conservation in Missouri, and also I believe at the National Center for Germplasm Research in Corvallis, Oregon.

The reason it hasn't bloomed in recent years is probably due to the succession process, as the canopy closes and the plants are increasingly shaded. The use of prescribed fire and removal of surrounding trees has been implemented to reverse this process. The other problem with managing this plant in the wild has been the presence of invasive Japanese honeysuckle and privet. These plants have been removed manually, which is very labor intensive. The last time I saw it, the grove was in good shape. This natural area is also the habitat for a number of other rare plants, and so it will continue to be managed carefully, regardless of the conservation status of the Stern's medlar.

It would be extremely interesting to replicate the original cross between the two presumed parent species-in other words, cross pollinate between a European medlar and the blueberry hawthorn. The seedlings from such a cross would presumably be Stern's medlars.

He also passed along a copy of the Lo et al. paper* (which I would be happy to share with any one interested). It's not the easiest reading, at least from my point of view (as much as I like taxonomy I find taxonomy papers mind-numbing), but buried in there are the evidences for a hybrid origin of M. canescens:

Nuclear sequence data showed M. canescens shared a recent common ancestor with the M. germanica samples, but chloroplast sequence was actually much more closely related to C. brachyacantha.

Stern's medlar shares many characteristics with C. brachyacantha that it does not with M. germanica: petals that turn orange upon drying, multiflorous inflorescences.

C. brachycantha occurs naturally in Louisiana, eastern Texas, and adjacent portions of Oklahoma and Arkansas. M. germanica, while native to Europe, is recorded to have been grown in Louisiana as long ago as 1893, placing the two species in close proximity of the only known site of Stern's medlar.

Both sexual (×Crataemespilus) and graft (+Crataegomespilus) hybrids between Crataegus and Mespilus. (I've discussed the general promiscuity of the whole Mespilus / Crataegus / Sorbus / Pyrus / Amelanchier club before).

There are a lot of reasons to reconsider Mespilus' standing as a distinct genus and include it in Crataegus.

They basically propose the following scenario for the origin of M. canescens:

Sometime, probably 150-200 years ago, pollen from cultivated medlars was transferred to a flower of blueberry hawthorn, resulting in hybrid seed.

The resulting seed produced hybrid individuals. However, because of differences between the parent species, meiosis was irregular and the hybrids were largely infertile.

The only viable gametes produced by this primary hybrid would have been unreduced, and thus diploid.

With these unreduced ova, occasional seed set might have occurred, and in those cases the pollen parent could have been either a medlar or another native diploid hawthorn (possibly red-fruited, like M. canescens).

Stern's medlar is the result of these secondary hybridizations.

I have to admit they lay out a pretty compelling case, both for revoking species status for M. canescens (they suggest designating it Crataegus ×canescens) and for absorbing Mespilus into Crataegus. But my personal taxonomic system is based more on sentiment than on anything else, and I'm definitely a splitter, not a lumper. So I'm going to keep Mespilus, and I'm going to keep calling Stern's medlar a medlar, because it's cooler that way.

*Lo, E.Y.Y., Stefanovic, S., and Dickinson, T.A. (2007) Molecular reappraisal of relationships between Crataegus and Mespilus (Rosaceae, Pyreae)—Two genera or one? Systematic Botany 32(3) 596-616.

Transgeninc plants in Hawai'i: A new colonialism?

2009-01-29T01:14:00.002-05:00

Hawai'i has the distinction of being the site of the first (and I think only) commercial trangenic fruit crop, a transgenic virus-resistant papaya. Without the transgenic papaya, there basically would be no Hawai'ian papaya industry. Even what little non-transgenic papaya production is left survives only by burying it in buffer zones of the transgenics.

Because of the level acceptance already in place for transgenic papaya, and probably because of the relative isolation of the island, Hawai'i is a popular plance for trials of transgenic crops. That's not real popular with some folks.

I'm a month late getting this posted, but Karl Haro von Mogel has a post on this up at Biofortified:

Hawai'i's curious relationship with with GE (Biofortified)

I can't remember if I've posted it before, but Karl's own blog, The Inoculated Mind is also worth a read.

#39 is good enough by me

2009-01-29T00:46:00.003-05:00

Well, I know absolutely nothing about the website, but I'm not going to question anyone who ranks The Fruit Blog among the top 50 genetics blogs.

Even aside from the opportunity to brag about my honors, it's worth checking out, because there are some great sites there. Some, like Sex, Genes, and Evolution, John Hawks' Weblog, and Pamela Ronald's Tomorrow's Table, I've been following for a while, but there are a bunch of others in there that look absolutely fascinating.

(Considering they seem to have grouped them by category, I suspect the ranking is meaningless.)

New strawberries from the University of Florida

2009-01-28T03:28:00.002-05:00

I added these to the "New Cultivars" section in the sidebar a while ago, but this is the first article I've seen on the new U.F. cultivars, Radiance and Elyana:

Safeguarding Strawberries (American Vegetable Grower)

I saw plants of both these varieties last week, and I was struck by how odd a plant 'Radiance' is. It's got sort of a soft, floppy look, like it's just slightly water stressed.

'WineCrisp' Scab Resistant Apple

2009-01-28T01:33:00.006-05:00

The cooperative apple breeding program of Purdue, Rutgers, and University of Illinois (aka PRI) has a new release: Wine Crisp.

WineCrisp--New Apple 20 Years in the Making (University of Illinois)

I have a sneaking suspicion that the name is a thinly-veiled attempt to capitalize on the popularity of 'HoneyCrisp', but it's not like the University of Minnesota owns the concept of crispness I suppose.

The PRI cooperative has released a lot of varieties over the years, although probably the only one I ever saw with any frequency was Gold Rush (an interesting apple in that it is far better after months of storage than it is fresh, at least in my opinion). The main emphasis of the program has always been disease resistance, especially scab resistance. WineCrisp (and many other scab resistant cultivars) use the Vf gene.

I wrote up a whole big thing on the inheritance of major gene resistance to scab, but it got involved enough that I decided not to leave it attached to this, but rather to to A) finish it, and B) take advantage of actually having something written and available that fits as a "Fruit Genetics Friday" entry, so maybe I'll roll it out later this week.

Bramley's Seedling Bicentennial

2009-01-24T11:48:00.002-05:00

Happy Birthday Bramley's Seedling--200 years old in 2009 (Fruit Forum)

There's even a collection of features and events in honor of the occasion (even what they claim is the first "video pie-cast").

Charlie is my Darwin

2009-01-16T04:04:00.005-05:00

Over on ScienceBlogs, a fellow by the name of John Whitfield has taken on the task of "blogging" Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species:

Blogging the Origin (ScienceBlogs)

I don't especially want this site to become a debate of evolution, but regardless of your views on the subject, the Origin is still worthwhile reading, and of great relevance to the actual purpose of this site. It's a study of genetics before there really was much in the way of a field of genetics, and ultimately, it's a study of variation in living organisms--and variation is at the very core of fruit breeding. Darwin doesn't always get it his individual points right, but the man had an amazing eye for variation in nature.

(Darwin dealt more specifically with matters of domestication in a later work, and actually wrote an entire book on inbreeding, an important concept in plant breeding.)

I really like the idea of "blogging" books (Lady Evil Fruit absolutely loved Slate.com's Blogging the Bible) and I'd do it here except I'm too lazy and I don't have a particular book in mind...

A whole bunch (er, hand?) of banana articles

2009-01-12T05:20:00.003-05:00

The New Agriculturist has a series of articles on African bananas:

African banana--on an upward curve (New Agriculturist)

Brought to my attention, as is so often the case, by the Agrobiodiversity Blog (they even threw in a bonus story on carotenoids in bananas...)

"Florida Grapes" website gone?

2009-01-07T01:44:00.005-05:00

I was just clicking through my links, and I found two of them that don't work, which is always a bummer. One of them, Rare Fruit Online, is at least still available through Archive.org (you can find it here) but the Florida Grapes website appears to have disappeared along with AOL's Hometown web service back in October, and isn't archived on Archive.org. Nor does it appear to be in the Google cache. (If you'd like to see it not working yourself, click here).

This is a major sadness for a pedigree junkie like me, because the site was a great source for parent information, particularly the selections from the programs of two of the "Three Bobs", Dunstan and Zehnder.

From my contacts within the grape breeding community, I feel fairly certain that that information is still preserved somewhere out there. But still, it's one thing for information to be available somewhere in some one's notebooks or spreadsheets, and another for it to be one Google search away.

If anybody has the pedigree information from this site, I'd try to put it online somewhere myself.

For now, I'm pulling both links from the sidebar. (As a condolence, I'm adding the Bananas.org forums).

The most Mendelian of Mendelian segregation

2009-01-07T01:33:00.002-05:00

This isn't really fruit related, but it is breeding related, so I declare it relevant:

Pea Breeding Project (Daughter of the Soil)

(I was inspired by the Agrobiodiversity Blog's mention of it, but I've been following Rebsie's blog for a while, so I'd have gotten around to it eventually.

'Ohio Everbearing' black raspberry

2009-01-04T23:56:00.018-05:00

When I first heard about the 'Explorer' primocane-fruiting black raspberry, I was convinced it was the first such variety. As it turned out, I was wrong, as numerous such cultivars existed by the turn of the century, although very few ever achieved any importance.

An exception to this, however, is the very first primocane-fruiting black raspberry, 'Ohio Everbearing'. Although not a major commercial success, this variety remains significant as one of the very first cultivated American selections of Rubus, and probably the first named black cap (given the abundance of wild black raspberries, it probably took an unusual trait such as fall-fruiting to warrant a name and cultivation).

'Ohio Everbearing' was discovered in the wild by Nicholas Longworth. Longworth was a self-made millionaire banker from Cincinnati, which in 1804 when he moved there was almost the western frontier. Although his family remained important in local and U.S. politics, and he left an estate worth $10 million when he died in 1863, Longworth's most lasting legacy is as a horticulturist. Often called "The Father of American Viticulture" (a title sometimes applied to his correspondent, John Adlum), Longworth was an avid collector and disseminator of fruit varieties. He championed first the 'Alexander' and then the 'Catawba' grapes and introduced at least one strawberry of his own creation.

Everbearing Black Caps listed in Fred Card's
Bush Fruits (1920)

American Everbearing
Cottier Everbearing
[Grigg's] Daily Bearing
Earhart
Everlasting
Every Day
Fadely
General Negley
Hixon's Everbearer
Kagy Everbearing
King of Cliff's
Lum's Autumn Black Raspberry
Lum's Yellow Canada
Miller's Daily Bearing
Munson's Everbearing
Mystery
Ransom's Everbearing
Sweet Home
Wonder

Longworth found the original 'Ohio Everbearing' somewhere in central Ohio, where he had retreated in the fall of 1832 to escape cholera outbreaks in Cincinnati. Despite it being September or October, he "found a raspberry in full bearing, a native of our state, the only everbearing raspberry I have ever met with. I introduced it the same winter into my garden, and it is now cultivated by me in preference to all others, and my table is supplied from the beginning of June to frost." Although the variety struggled somewhat on the gravelly soils of his fields, it performed better on clay soils, and Longworth was convinced it might have a future, especially in England. He sent plants there, as did A.J. Downing, though it seems have had little impact there. The legendary Dr. Hogg did note its existence in England as late as 1884, when it was probably gone in the U.S. (Incidentally, in my hypothetical strawberry-themed band, my stage name was going to be "Dr. Hogg").

Longworth was among the foremost horticultural authorities of his day, and an everbearing variety of raspberry would seem to be a major development, so it seems like it should have caught on, but while he and a few others cultivated it commercially, it never seems to have. Black caps, in general, have never attained commercial prominence, perhaps because they were foreign to European tastes, and thus unable to compete with the more familiar red raspberries. Many other everbearers, such as 'Grigg's Daily Bearing', 'Miller's Daily Bearing', and 'Lum's Autumn Black' were selected from its seedlings. (Indeed, I rather suspect most, if not all, of those everbearing black raspberries that appeared in the second half of the nineteenth century may claim it as an ancestor. Most of these seem to originate in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, or Illinois, the areas nearest the discovery and commercialization of Longworth's variety).

And while we're talking about obscure fruits with Z's in their names...

2009-01-04T23:22:00.005-05:00

I recently came across this fairly thorough discussion of Syzygium species from the Philippines on the blog Market Manila, with the common names "makopa" and "tambis". The discussion features a number of photos and spans three posts:

Tambis / Makopa / Curacao or Malay Apple
The Tambis (Syzygium Aqueum) Chronicles, Take II…
Tambis & Makopa Side By Side…

I don't really know much about the Myrtaceae. I was reminded of these posts because Syzygium sounded kind of like Ziziphus, and had it in my head that the two fruits looked kind of alike (although not so much, now that I look at them again). I thought maybe they were related, but no, not remotely--they're not even in the same order.

Jujube jujube?

2009-01-04T22:30:00.005-05:00

I just came across an interesting tidbit on the nomenclature of the cultivated jujube (mostly on an obscure corner of the internet called Wikipedia...)

Ever since I learned the jujubes were actual fruit and not just a type of candy, I've been using Ziziphus jujube as the Latin name (now, granted, it's not like the Latin binomial for jujube comes up in my daily conversation that much). Well, apparently I'm a little bit behind the times, because the name seems to have been Ziziphus zizyphus since 1882.

I personally am so easily amused that this alone would be adequate to entertain me, but the story of how it wound up with that name is kind of interesting as well. In general, tautonyms (those in which the genus and species names are identical), while permitted in zoological nomenclature (hence Gorilla gorilla and Iguana iguana) are no good in botanical names. However, this one skated by on a technicality.

It was Mr. Taxonomy himself, Carolus Linnaeus, who gave the species its first modern binomial, Rhamnus zizyphus, placing it in the same genus as the buckthorns. However, in 1768 Philip Miller (a late and reluctant adopter of Linneaus' binomial system) decided it was sufficiently different to merit a separate genus, and gave it the name Ziziphus jujube. Why he changed it from a 'y' to an 'i' is unclear--it might well have been a typographical error. However, the arcane rules of taxonomy dictated that because Ziziphus and zizyphus were the first validly published and described names, and were not actually in violation of the tautonym rule thanks to the spelling difference, and thus the appropriate name, so in 1882 the name was changed to Ziziphus zizyphus.

And yes, I realize I'm probably one of about three people who found that interesting.

Kid's version of the Endicott pear story...

2009-01-04T19:16:00.002-05:00

Not real fancy, but still kind of nice. I can appreciate any attempt to get kids interested in horticulture. It held my two-year-old's attention for nearly a minute, which is about 45 seconds longer than almost anything else I've tried this afternoon.

A Tree Grows in Danvers (USDA-ARS)

Primocane-fruiting black raspberries, revisited

2009-01-04T15:00:00.006-05:00

I was pleased to find a note in my e-mail this morning from Pete Tallman, developer of the 'Explorer' black raspberry. I mentioned 'Explorer' two years ago (have I really been at this that long?) as an exciting development in a crop in which very little breeding has been done (and, frankly, very little breed success obtained).

Unfortunately, 'Explorer' has not really been a success. I've seen it twice, both times under tunnels: once in Pennsylvania, where it had virtually no fruit and a powdery mildew problem, and another time in upstate New York, where the plants looked healthier but fruit set was still poor, though better. I was rather disappointed, as I'd been pretty excited about the thing.

Tallman's message today explains a big part of the problem: 'Explorer' is not self-fertile. Apparently his field featured things that flowered and provided adequate pollen at the right time, so the problem was never evident under his conditions. This fits with what I saw: the tunnel at Penn State where I saw it had, if I recall, only one other variety in it, while the one in NY, where it had at least some fruit, had several.

While unfortunate, this isn't entirely shocking, as self-incompatibility is fairly common among wild, diploid Rubus, and 'Explorer' is not far removed from the wild source of the primocane-fruiting trait that Tallman discovered. (Not surprisingly, the trait hasn't persisted very long in most commercial types).

Anyway, all is not lost. Tallman has selected another primocane-fruiting black raspberry, dubbed PT-2A4, which does pass the self-compatibility test, and has other desirable traits compared to 'Explorer'. As he describes it:

"Compared to Explorer, the PT-2A4 berries are larger, higher drupelet count, and smaller seeds. PT-2A4 holds my all-time record for a single primocane black raspberry at 3.82 grams. Admittedly, that's a max berry, not an average, but I gotta track something, and average isn't awfuly interesting. Maybe with a little fertilizer this year I could break 4 grams. Unfortuantely, PT-2A4 hasn't captured the reduced thorniness of Explorer, so there remains further breeding down the road to see if I can tie that trait back in again."

He also included a link to his website, which includes a page for PT-2A4.

New grape rootstocks from the University of California

2009-01-04T05:36:00.003-05:00

Five new rootstocks from Andy Walker's breeding program at UC-Davis (cleverly named GRN-1 through 5):

New nematode resistant rootstocks for 2008 (Western Farm Press)

I was particularly pleased to see that GRN-1 is a hybrid of bunch grape and muscadine. Despite lots of talk about Euvitis/Muscadinia hybrids, there really haven't been many releases (I can only think of this and 'Southern Home', as well as maybe a few germplasm releases).

I don't know nearly as much about grape rootstock breeding as I do about the above ground part, but I always enjoy seeing how much wild material is used, and the completely different selection of species they're dealing with: V. champinii, rufotomentosa, monticola, rotundifolia, rupestris, and berlandieri, just in these five releases. Some of these (especially the first three) rarely if ever occur in the pedigrees of fruiting vines.

A new year and a new look for the Fruit Blog

2009-01-04T04:58:00.004-05:00

Well, I know I've been a bit scarce lately...between the holidays and everything else my mind's just been elsewhere. But I made a sort of New Year's resolution to keep this thing going, so I sat down to write a new post...

...and instead I re-did the blog template. Hopefully everyone likes it. I don't really know HTML that well, and there are still lingering issues (expect tinkering here and there for a while). There wasn't really a grand vision or anything--I just started screwing around with things.

The first thing you'll probably notice is the second sidebar. I decided to do this because to put everything in the one sidebar meant that useful things frequently got buried way, way down at the bottom. I may have somewhat reduced the impact of this by interspersing the fruit watercolors (from the USDA collection), but I thought they looked cool, and they kind fixed my problem with the grey not going down to the very bottom of the page like I wanted. I know things are a little more cluttered now...but hopefully not unreadably so.

Probably the biggest addition is the "Books" section in the sidebar. These are books about fruit and breeding that I've found interesting over the years (I don't actually own all of them, but I do most, and I've at least looked at all of them). The titles link to their respective Amazon pages (although some are out of print, and so your only hope is going to be a used copy). In the interest of full disclosure: I am a part of the Amazon Associates program, and get a cut (a very small cut) of anything you buy through these links. I have mixed feelings about this, since I didn't create this blog with the intention of making money (and what a fool I'd have been if I had!). But I do have a few costs here and there (domain name registration, for example) and a couple of bucks would provide me a little more incentive to keep things going around here when things get slow. I've been approached several times about placing ads on the site, but I've always turned them down. This way I keep control of what gets advertised, and hopefully people find some interesting or useful books. (It's kind of a pain to set up the links, so I have to admit I didn't put a ton of care into their organization or selection. I'll keep adding and arranging this section over time. If you have any suggestions you'd like added, let me know).

Anyway, hope everyone had a happy holidays, and hopefully you'll be seeing a little more of me. Please let me know if the new layout has screwed something up for you, or if you hate it or would like to see other enhancements.

Update: I've checked the new template in Safari, two versions of Firefox, and Flock. I'll check it in Chrome and Explorer when I get to work on Monday, but frankly I don't hold out a lot of hope for Explorer...the site's always looked kind of crappy on it, and I doubt this made it any better.

Rumors of the bananas' death have been greatly exaggerated?

2008-11-15T16:11:00.004-05:00

Found this today thanks to the wonder of Google News:

Banana Shortage? Nothing to Worry About (Medicine Hat News)

This of course misunderstands (or maybe just ignores) the biggest threat posed by banana diseases. Pesticides and cultural practices can probably preserve banana production for those of us in developed countries, where a few cents difference in price doesn't even register. But bananas are also a staple crop for millions of people, many of whom are already in a very precarious position. Even a slight decrease in yield could mean going hungry, or it could also mean the elimination of the what little surplus they had to barter or sell to buy other supplies, pay for schooling or medicine, etc.

(Sorry I haven't been around--just been distracted.)

Journal of Genetics

2008-10-13T03:26:00.004-04:00

I just discovered that just about every article ever in the Journal of Genetics is available online! (I say "just about", because they appear to have missed a couple). The Journal of Genetics was the site of some of the great early articles in fruit genetics, and by virtue of being so darn old, people rarely seem to have copies of them floating around, so the fact that they are now just a click away is pretty darn cool.

I was also interested to note that the Journal of Genetics followed editor J.B.S. Haldane (yes, that Haldane) to India when he moved there in 1957--so the journal is currently published by the Indian Academy of Sciences.

Anyway, as an example of the goodies lurking in depths of the Journal of Genetics, I present one of my favorite series of papers, by C.W. Richardson. They're favorites for two reasons. First, they were some of the first attempts at serious genetics in strawberries, a crop that is near and dear to my heart. But second, and frankly more importantly, they have some of the least informative titles ever. I always hate when I have to cite them, because I always have to actually pull out the papers and look through them, because its impossible to remember which facts go with which...

A Preliminary Note on the Genetics of Fragaria (1914)
A Further Note on the Genetics of Fragaria (1918)
Some Notes on Fragaria (1920)
Notes on Fragaria (1923)*

* This last one, unfortunately, is one of the ones they seem to have missed scanning--there's a link, but no PDF.

Update: A friend of mine found the missing paper! It's been accidentally included at the end of the previous article! (Just scroll down...)

Winter Banana

2008-10-10T02:52:00.004-04:00

I just had my first 'Winter Banana' apple (and am about halfway through my second), from a local ranch just up the road from where I work. It's really good! I worried a little bit about an apple with "winter" in the name--I thought maybe it suggested an apple selected for its storage potential, not flavor. But the concern was unwarranted. The flesh was fine-grained and crisp but gave easily. The flavor was sweet and mild, and the mild aroma, while not to me particularly reminiscent of banana, was unusual and distinct, though not intrusive.

Plus, it's a beautiful apple. Medium-size, glossy, green with a striking red blush covering maybe a third of the surface. Apparently it was once a fruit-basket favorite because of its good looks. I bought three of them, so I've saved one and maybe I'll take a picture of it for you.

Beach Apples

2008-10-10T02:33:00.003-04:00

I've seen a handful of stunted twisted apples near beaches over the years, but never anything with fruit that could rival the Aldeburgh beach apple:

An Apple at the Sea Side (Joan Morgan's Fruit Forum)

The Vaviblog

2008-10-07T00:52:00.002-04:00

There's not too much there yet, but I'd link to just for the name alone:

Vaviblog

Basically a blog in the voice of Nikolai Vavilov (in case it wasn't obvious from the name.)

Now maybe we know why they were keeping the name a secret...

2008-10-05T23:59:00.003-04:00

Maybe it's because it's kind of stupid: The new University of Minnesota apple release is named 'SweeTango'.

An Apple Is Born (Epicurious)

Plus: We've entered a new age! YouTube trailers for fruit cultivars!
SweeTango - A Sneak Preview (YouTube)

(Much thanks to the anonymous commenter who noted this on the post below...I thought it deserved more exposure).

All I can say is I hope the apple is better than the name. It's got an encouraging pedigree at least—Honeycrisp x Zestar.

Irish Apples

2008-10-02T02:37:00.002-04:00

Not a ton of substance here, unfortunately, but I'm a sucker for any story with lots of old apple names:

Irish Peach has a crisp flavor (BBC)

I'm kind of bummed that 'Irish Peach' gets no mention outside of the title and a caption. C'mon...don't toy with us like that.

I think about England a lot when it comes to apples...somehow Ireland kind of gets forgotten.

Jeesh...

2008-10-02T02:19:00.003-04:00

...is there a limitless supply of these scraper sites? I crush one out and another pops up. This one appears to be mirroring it automatically.

So this one's for them:

You are reading The Fruit Blog:

thefruitblog.blogspot.com
or
www.thefruitblog.com

If you are reading this anywhere else (except on an RSS reader or through FoodCandy), then the site you are reading this on stole this content. Please do not patronize their advertisers, and please feel free to tell them how you feel about about stealing content (assuming you feel badly about it--if you're really into it and think its awesome, you don't need to say anything. Also, please go away.)

Okay, now I feel a little better.

'Honeycrisp' and the U. of Minnesota Apple Breeding Program

2008-10-02T01:43:00.004-04:00

Just came across a nice piece on the University of Minnesota apple breeding program:

With Honeycrisp's patent expiring, U of M looks for new apple (CityPages.com)

I thought the article was a decent "layman's" sort of overview of the UMN apple breeding program, and there's certainly plenty of interest in the program these days thanks to 'Honeycrisp', which has seen a surge of popularity unlike anything I've seen for an apple variety in my lifetime. 'Honeycrisp' at one point commanded an enormous premium, though massive plantings have begun to drive prices down (and there are those who consider it to have been grossly overplanted--many of the trees still due to come into production in the next few years. We'll see how that pans out...)

I like 'Honeycrisp' quite a bit, but I have a hard time believing it really ranks with Google as one of "25 Innovations That Changed The World" (Warning—PDF). It's certainly seen quite the burst of popularity, and yes, it's got an unusual texture, but its basically just a relative outlier on an existing scale of textures. I'm told there are other varieties with a similar breaking texture out there, such as 'Red Baron' (though admittedly I haven't had them). It's definitely good, and it's definitely interesting, but it's an incremental development, not a revolutionary one.

I think the argument is that it was revolutionary in the sense that it revitalized a lot of orchards in the Northeast and upper Midwest, particularly small family farms, and it did in fact do that to an extent. However, I think that's partly due to good marketing, and partly an element of "right place, right time". Full of varieties 50+ years old and little recent momentous development, the market was ripe for something new in the way of apples, and 'Honeycrisp' was distinct enough to fill that niche.

I'm still wondering what the newest UMN apple release is going to be named--last time I spoke to some one who'd heard the name, they treated it as though it was secret on par with a nuclear launch code (even while admitting it was being used freely in some circles). So it better be good.

Update: I noticed that the USDA site on 'Honeycrisp' that I linked to has old, incorrect pedigree--Macoun x Honeygold. This was disproven via molecular fingerprinting some years ago (this was actually the subject of the second Fruit Blog post ever). One parent is 'Keepsake', the other unknown.

I've been entertaining myself playing with grape marker data from the USDA, checking out possible parents for old American cultivars. That's how you know you're a big fruit geek--when you spend hours comparing pedigree data for fun...

Blogged with the Flock Browser

I know it's useless to complain, but...

2008-09-27T18:10:00.002-04:00

...please, don't spam the comments. If you post an irrelevant link, I don't care how witty or insightful the comment you attach to it is, I'm going to delete the comment. People reading about citrus are not shopping for hard drives or electronic scales or whatever else it is you're selling on your bizarro pseudo-blog.

Sorry, just needed to gripe a little. We've been getting slammed pretty hard, and I don't know a real good way to avoid it. It's obviously real people doing it and not mass-spamming robots, because they sometimes write semi-relevant comments, so I can't imagine its really economical.

Fruit Genetics Friday #7: Plant Sex Chromosomes Part II: Strawberries

2008-09-26T00:03:00.010-04:00

A couple weeks back, in the very infrequent Fruit Genetics Friday series, I discussed sex chromosomes in fruit, specifically papaya. At the time, the only two fruit crops I knew of with sex chromosomes were papaya and kiwi. Monday I opened my e-mail to a paper, forwarded to me by a friend who is also one of the authors, describing a very interesting development in this area:

Genetic mapping of sex determination in a wild strawberry, Fragaria virginiana, reveals earliest form of sex chromosome (Heredity)

(Unfortunately, for non-subscribers, this will just be an abstract, but I'll try to hit the good stuff).

People were excited about the discovery of sex chromosomes in papaya, because it represented one of the most primitive sex chromosomes yet found in plants. Well, it turns out that F. virginiana, one of the ancestors of our cultivated strawberry, has sex chromosomes too (counter to what I said in that earlier post, incidentally), and these are even younger in their development! They're also really unusual in how they operate. In papaya and kiwi, as well as most other plants and lots of animals, the homogametic sex is the female (as in 'XX') and the heterogametic sex is male ('XY'). This seems to be the more typical arrangement, but strawberries, oddly enough, have the opposite arrangement.

So if you recall the arrangement in papaya, you had two critical loci. One, which we'll call "F" is a suppressor of femaleness, and the other is a promoter of maleness, which we'll call "M". So the two "wild type" chromosomes (which I'll call X and Y, since it puts it in terms people are familiar with and is essentially correct, even though the terminology isn't really used consistently in plants) consist of:

f---m (X chromosome)

F---M (Y chromosome)

So a female would be XX, or (fm)/(fm), so no maleness promoted and no femaleness suppressed. And male would be XY, with the femaleness suppressed, and maleness promoted. Hermaphrodites are generally a mutation of the Y chromosome (which we'll call the Y⁺ chromosome), so that the suppression of female development ceases to function, but male development still takes place:

(f)---M (Y⁺ chromosome)

So the sexes are basically female (XX), male (XY), and hermaphrodite (XY⁺). (because the YY isn't viable, you can't get a homozygous, true-breeding hermaphrodite).

Well, turns out strawberry has a different arrangement. The roles of the genes are kind of reversed. You have a dominant promoter of femaleness (which we'll call 'G' (for "gyn-", as used in the paper)), and a dominant gene for male sterility (which the paper calls 'A', as in "andro-"). And in this case we'll use Z and W (the system from birds) rather than the XY system.

So the arrangement is:

g---a (Z chromosome)

G---A (W chromosome)

So the sexes are female (ZW) and male (ZZ). This actually fits with some old research dating as far back as the 1920's suggesting that the female is the heterogametic sex. This was backed up by Ahmadi and Bringhurst, who suggested a single locus with three alleles, F, H, and M (in decreasing order of dominance). I kind of suspect many of these single locus, three allele systems, which have been proposed in other species as well, turn out to be variations on the two locus system, like in strawberry or papaya.

Here's a cool bit: The strawberry sex chromosome is pretty primitive, and so recombination in between these loci isn't fully suppressed, and you actually get crossover between them 5.7% of the time. As a result, you can get variations, namely hermaphrodites (resulting from a G/a recombinant) or a neuter (the result of a g/A recombinant). That suggests something which is only barely functioning as a sex chromosome.

Because the sex chromosome seems to have evolved very recently, what I'm curious about is how widespread in related species it is. I think it quite likely that the other major octoploid species, Fragaria chiloensis, and its offspring with F. virginiana, the cultivated F. x ananassa, share this scheme. But do the lower ploidy strawberries?

If diploid strawberries possessed sex chromosomes previous to the evolution of octoploids, then the octoploids should have eight sex chromosomes. Having this many would probably result in a mess (although it seems to work out alright for the short-beaked echidna), and the fact that sex inheritance seems to be pretty simple suggest that if the octoploid had eight sex chromosomes, then six of them have probably ceased to function as such.

Though there may be some exceptions (there are a bunch of east Asian diploid species I'm not really familiar with) the diploids I'm aware of, F. vesca, F. viridis, and F. nubicola seem to be almost (but not quite) uniformly hermaphrodite. Yet a number of higher ploidy species in addition to the octoploids, including the hexaploid F. moschata and the tetraploid F. orientalis are at least partially dioecious. It may be that polyploidy, by creating "backup" copies of the chromosomes possessing the sex controlling loci, allows divergence of one pair into more specialized sex chromosomes.

I'd be curious to know if closely-related genera such as Rubus and Potentilla share this system. Research suggests that in both of these species, the females are the heterogametic sex. If they possessed similar sex chromosomes, that would suggest that the strawberry's sex chromosomes have remained in their primitive state for a long time, or that something about the common ancestor was prone to the development of such an arrangement.

The other, perhaps less novel, but no less cool, aspect of the paper is that it introduces the first SSR-based map of the octoploid strawberry. Including two markers linked to the sex loci!

Anyway, all told, pretty cool, huh?

When Citrus Goes Feral

2008-09-21T00:21:00.003-04:00

I've posted a few times in the past about the looming threat of citrus greening in the U.S. One of the biggest problems underlying this issue is the staggering quantity of abandoned citrus groves in Florida:

Abandoned Groves a Citrus Greening Threat (The Ledger, Lakeland, FL)

The groves serve as breeding grounds for the citrus psyllid, which transmits the bacterial disease. According to the article, a recent USDA survey calculated that there are 129,869 acres of abandoned citrus groves in Florida, roughly a fifth of the citrus acreage in Florida. That's 202 square miles!

Disease threats like this are hardly possible to eradicate even with careful management, and abandoned groves are everywhere in Florida. As I've mentioned before, the citrus industry in Florida hasn't been in great shape for a while, and greening isn't helping. And although the psyllid and greening are the current focus, feral groves are a ready reservoir for all kinds of pests and diseases.

But although a clear threat, abandoned groves in Florida also represent an opportunity. For one thing, they represent thousands of acres of quality agricultural land, sitting unused. This could be in the form of a new crop, or in rehabilitating the old. By virtue of being abandoned, these groves are basically "instant organic". Companies such as Uncle Matt's Organic have been rehabilitating some of these groves and producing organic citrus and citrus products. Because of the significant premium enjoyed by organics, these groves don't need to attain full commercial yields to be profitable, and a little regular maintenance can make a big difference in keeping diseases and pests from running wild.

(I met Uncle Matt last winter in Florida--he's a nice guy with a quality product. He's got a couple of short videos up about organic citrus growing, and I'm hoping for more in the future--the next one is supposed to be on disease control.)

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"Fruit Philanthropist"

2008-09-19T22:59:00.001-04:00

TIME magazine's Lexicon section this week featured a term I rather like:

fruit philanthropist n.
Someone who voluntarily harvests surplus fruit and then donates it to food banks and centers for the elderly

USAGE: "Thus was born North Berkeley Harvest, part of a small but expanding movement of backyard urban gleaners--they might be called fruit philanthropists." --New York Times, Sept. 14, 2008

'Sweet Sunshine' Grape

2008-09-16T00:25:00.001-04:00

The latest in a long line of table grapes billed as "the new Thompson Seedless". (Frankly I think they ought to shoot a tad higher). This one is from International Fruit Genetics, a program now run by David Cain, former grape breeder for Sun World.

If I remember right, Packer articles go away for non-subscribers after a while, but for a while you can read it here:

Sweet Sunshine grape has successful first season (The Packer)

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Help out [fruit] businesses in the developing world

2008-09-08T02:11:00.005-04:00

I found Kiva a while back, and thought it seemed like a good idea, but never got around to loaning anything (I won't bother to explain how it works...check out their site if you're interested). Tonight I sort of rediscovered it, and also found that they now have a lending "teams" feature.

There are often business that involve growing or selling fruit, and although lots and lots of businesses on there are worthy causes, I have a special place in my heart for these. In addition, I truly think that fruit can be a means of improving not only one's prosperity (which I would hope in such cases it does) but also one's health and quality of life.

Lack of capital for startup or expansion can be a major hurdle to any business--and even a small loan is normally unattainable to much of the world's population.

So, anyway, I've started a "Fruit Blog Lenders" team on Kiva, and would invite anyone who's interested to join (you won't be tied into lending through the team, and I certainly will not hold any one who does join to lending only to fruit business, even myself--consider it a general theme, but I'm more concerned about helping out in general than promoting fruit in specific.) Even if you don't want to join our team (I know, I know, you're embarrassed to be seen with me) please considering lending a little something through Kiva. Think of it as charity for cheap people. Or you can think of it as an easy way to change lives. (Whichever works for you).

Unfortunately (well, fortunately in that it represents a success, unfortunate because it keeps me from doing anything) there are no unfunded loans at the minute. Pretty exciting, really, because in the past there have been dozens and dozens. But keep looking, because I'm sure there'll be more soon.

"Breadfruit Bligh"

2008-09-02T23:50:00.014-04:00

Those folks over at the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog manage to dig up some good stuff:

National Tropical Botanic Garden - Breadfruit Collection

I've got to admit that breadfruits aren't a fruit I have too much experience with, and realistically most of what I could put together here is already going to be on that page, only written by people who know much, much more.

I did have a grizzled old banana worker, shy a few fingers, attempt to sell me one on a roadside outside of Cauhita, Costa Rica. I had a good time talking to him, alternating between my broken Spanish and his barely intelligible (to me) Caribbean English. What I really wanted was one of his bananas (he did eventually sell me one), but he really wanted to sell that breadfruit. He'd have sold it cheap, too, and I have to confess that I was curious, but I wasn't exactly sure what I was going to do with a raw breadfruit nearly the size of a volleyball, with no knife, no room in my bag, and at that point, not even a place to sleep. So I turned it down, assuming I'd see breadfruit again in my travels there. But I didn't.

It's hard to say what variety it was--I certainly am not an expert on breadfruit cultivars--but according to my notes at the time, of those listed on the Selected Varieties page, it most closely resembled 'White', which would at least be geographically consistent.

Which does bring up an interesting intersection of history and the breadfruit. Although many people are familiar with the story of the mutiny on the Bounty, most seem to forget the whole reason behind the H.M.S. Bounty's mission, namely to collect breadfruit trees in the Society Islands, for use as a source of high energy food for slaves in the Caribbean (you can read Bligh's orders here). (They were also supposed to pick up mangosteens to replace any breadfruit trees that died). Captain Bligh's zeal for his mission was such that his crew took to calling him "Breadfruit Bligh". The crew collected 1,015 plants in Tahiti and set off on their return voyage, but the crew had become a bit too attached to Tahiti, and three weeks later they rose up in their famous mutiny, pitched the plants overboard, and headed back to Tahiti.

You've got to give Bligh credit, though. He took the whole breadfruit thing pretty darn seriously. I like fruit—a lot, actually. But if my friends and I headed out to fetch some, say, grapes, and on the way home, my companions, say, set me adrift in an open boat for 47 days, then the next time it occurred to me that some grapes might be good, I think I might decide that, you know what, maybe I didn't need grapes after all. Not our man Bligh. A year and a half after finally making his way back to England, he set sail again, on the H.M.S. Providence, once again in search of breadfruit. This time he successfully retrieved 2,126 breadfruit trees (one of which is believed to have been the source of the 'White' cultivar in the Caribbean). He also brought back a vast collection of other plants, the names of many of which I can't even recognize. I've transcribed one such list, accompanied by my guesses as to the plants indicated. Please feel free to make suggestions! (some of this may be archaic names, some may be obscure plants):

TAHITI
Breadfruit	Breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis)
Rattah	Tahitian Chestnut (Inocarpus edulis)?
Ay'ah	?
Av'vee or Vee	Vee Tree, ambarella, Otaheite apple (Spondias dulcis)
Oraiah	"a very superior kind of plantain" (Musa paradisiaca)
Pee'ah	?
Vai'hee	?
Cocoa Nut	Coconut (Cocos nucifera)
Ettow	Geiger Tree (Cordia sebestena)
Mattee	Dye fig(Ficus tinctoria)

POSSESSION ISLAND, NEW GUINEA
Sao, or Sow	"a kind of plum"

TIMOR
Breadfruit, Otaheite (Taihiti) Kind	Breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis)
Breadfruit, which bears feed	?
Mango	Mango (Mangifera sp.)
Iamblang	Jambul (Syzygium cumini)
Iambo Iremavah	?
Iambo Ma'ree	?
Blimbing	Bilimbi (Averrhoa bilimbi)
Cheramailah	Cherimoya? If so, what's it doing in Timor?
Karambola	Starfruit, Carambola (Averrhoa carambola)
Nonefang, or Lemon China	Limeberry (Triphasia trifolia)
Cosambee	?
Nanka	Jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus)
Namnam	(Cynometra cauliflora)
Pomegranates	Pomegranates (Punica granatum)
Seeree boah, or Long Pepper	(Piper longum?)
Seeree down	?
Bintaloo	?
Dangreedah	?
Bugahnah Kanangah	Ylang-ylang (Cananga odorata)
Iattee, or Tickwood	?

ST. HELENA
Plantain	Plantain (Musa paradisiaca)
China Orange	Sweet orange (Citrus sinensis)
Dwarf Peach	Peach (Prunus persica)
Almonds	Almonds (Prunus dulcis
Nutmeg from St. Vincent's	Nutmeg (Myristica sp., probably fragrans)
Coffee	Coffee (Coffea sp.)
Gwavah	Guava (Psidium sp.)
Poorah'ow	Coconut (Cocos nucifera)

An impressive collection, even in an age when trucking plant species around the planet was almost frighteningly common. Bligh established (or at least attempted to establish) these species in St. Helena, St. Vincent, and in Jamaica. While in Jamaica, he also brought back to England samples of akee, which had been previously transported to the Carribbean from West Africa, and introduced it to the scientific community. The scientific name, Blighia sapida, honors the captain.

Still, despite all this, Bligh remains best known for his mutinous crew. And, amazingly, though Bligh does not appear to have been an especially harsh captain for his time, the Bounty was not the last mutiny under his command. His crew revolted during the Spithead and Nore mutinies as well (these were large movements, and affected multiple ships and captains, though), and then, as Governor of New South Wales, he was deposed in an uprising called "the Rum Rebellion".

Bligh died in London in 1817, having crossed the globe several times, served on dozens of ships, and collected dozens of plant species. His tombstone lists the introduction of the breadfruit to the West Indies as one of his accomplishments, and the monument itself is crowned by a stone breadfruit.

(photos by Miranda Hodgson, used under the terms of the Creative Commons License).

Electron Micrographs of Fruit and Seeds

2008-09-02T23:42:00.002-04:00

Very cool stuff, courtesy of the BBC:

Fruit Under the Microscope

The International Banana Society

2008-08-31T23:36:00.004-04:00

A whole bunch of banana posts here lately, so I might as well break out another long forgotten find from the bookmarks:

The International Banana Society

The site is basically just forums, but those forums are big, active, and packed with information and photos. I'm not in a place to really grow bananas (I did have an Abyssinian one in Florida before I moved to California, though) so I can't make use of a lot of it, but it seems like a big bunch of passionate, well-informed people.

I'm enjoying reading about mutant banana sports.

Update: Check it out—it's Big Mike!

Book Review: The Heirloom Tomato by Amy Goldman and Victor Schrager

2008-08-31T23:17:00.011-04:00

The Heirloom Tomato:
From Garden to Table

Amy Goldman,
photos by Victor Schrager

lllustrated, 272 pages
Bloomsbury USA, 2008
List $35

I almost turned down the opportunity to review this book, given that tomatoes aren't generally considered fruit (who am I to question the United States Supreme Court?). Still, I'd been sufficiently impressed with Goldman's earlier books on melons and squashes, after seeing her speak at the ASHS conference in Las Vegas a few years back, that I decided to bend the rules a little bit, partly because I really wanted a look at this thing.

I wasn't disappointed. First of all, the book is beautiful. Schrager absolutely deserves full billing along with Goldman, because the photos alone would make this book worth buying. He did the photos for her previous two books, too, and while those were also impressive, the tomato book is easily my favorite (I may be a little biased in their favor by the fact that I'd rather eat tomatoes than the other two, so I find each photo has me pondering the possibility of eating the thing (even when the accompanying text describes its flavor as "nonexistent" or "poor, very tart, tastes underripe"). The diversity of tomatoes has always amazed me, and Schrager's images have captured it superbly.

In a vast majority of books like this, the text barely rises above the level of filler--just enough to string the photos together and call it a book, so it can be admired on coffee tables or wherever, but Goldman has actually done an excellent job in characterizing each of the hundreds of varieties, often recounting stories of the varieties' origins or even her personal interactions with the breeder. She recalls conversations with Dick Robinson (who also has a blurb inside the cover), the tomato breeder from Cornell's Geneva experiment station, where I used to work. It's good to see Dick, now emeritus, still actively engaged in the world of tomatoes, though any one who knew him would hardly be surprised that he would, for as long as he remains able.

Goldman actually grew each of these tomato varieties herself, in her own vast test plot, where she has tried roughly five hundred different cultivars. It must be quite a sight...presumably there are still melons and squashes in abundance there, too, as well as other vegetables. That bit of personal experience shows in each of the descriptions, which are not only interesting to read, but also start off with a standard set of data, including size, weight, Brix, interior and exterior color, flavor, usage and seed source, as well as, in every case where it's actually known, the origin. (This is a particular pet peeve of mine in books about varieties of fruits or veggies--so many neglect to say where varieties come from. Attributing them to the appropriate source is not only good form, giving credit where credit is due, but where and by whom a variety was produced can tell a lot about it to people familiar with the background. And it's hard to get familiar if no one tells you anything...). Ms. Goldman is clearly involved in the efforts to preserve these varieties, and she should be commended for that as well as for her excellent book.

My gripes are all very minor: First, although it doesn't stop me from being interested in them, I take issue with her definition of heirloom, which clearly extends to just about anything that isn't a hybrid variety, as there are cultivars less than a decade old included, from fairly major breeding programs. I don't mind them being there--I'm not picking as to where my tomatoes come from--but to me that's not an "heirloom". The two relevant dictionary definitions are "being an old variety that is being cultivated again" and "a family possession handed down from generation to generation." To me, an heirloom goes beyond merely being open-pollinated, it also means carrying a certain historical weight as well.

Secondly, the recipes, which fill the last sixty-odd pages, while quite appetizing looking, seem utterly superfluous in what is, despite the pretty pictures, a horticulture book. I have plenty of cookbooks--I don't need this book to pretend to be one on top of everything elese.

The index is a single page, and consists only of the names of the two hundred varieties profiled. While this serves it's purpose adequately it's really easy to miss, tucked away in the very back (I had initially included a complaint about the lack of an index in this spot until I noticed the mention of one in an Amazon review), and I would rather it was more complete, allowing you to look up references to specific breeders, programs, areas, or types of varieties as well.

Still, all in all, this is still an immensely satisfying book, worthy of a place on the coffee table, the bedside table, the kitchen table, or the potting bench.

You can purchase it online at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

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SINGER

2008-08-31T19:18:00.003-04:00

This is pretty nifty:

System-wide Information Network for GEnetic Resources

With all the map features, this is definitely a fun site to just play with, but I have to say I'm a little disappointed that after trying about a dozen fruit genera, all I could come up with hits on were banana (Musa), mulberry (Morus) and stone fruits (Prunus), and the Prunus and Morus collections are mighty thin...

It came from Planet Pomegranate...

2008-08-31T18:50:00.001-04:00

I had intended to link to this back when I reviewed the pomegranate book, but I think I forgot...

Planet Pomegranate

There's a bunch of non-pomegranate stuff, too, so you may just want to skip straight to the pomegranate news page...

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Tahitian vanilla is an interspecific hybrid

2008-08-31T06:02:00.004-04:00

It looks like the origins of Tahitian vanilla (Vanilla tahitiensis), long a mystery, have been resolved:

Tahitian Vanilla Originated in Maya Forests, Says Botanists (Science Daily)

It's not terribly shocking that the origin is Central America, given that the historical record supported the idea of going from Guatemala to Taihiti, via the Philippines. What was suprising, to me anyway, was the fact that it turns out to be an interspecific hybrid (maybe this wasn't a shocker to vanilla botanists, but my vanilla knowledge is kind of limited) between V. planifolia, the species currently cultivated for most vanilla production, and V. odorata, a species not know to have ever been cultivated. Taihitian vanilla is distinct in that it possesses the compound heliotropin, which no doubt came from the odorata parent, and gives the beans their unusually floral aroma.

The story reminds me a little of that of the cultivated strawberry, the interspecific hybrid coming into prominence far from its ancestors native lands, but of course in this case the hybridization likely occurred long before they went to Taihiti, probably in some Mayan garden. If and when the data gets published, it would be interesting to see how distant a hybrid the genetic evidence suggests this is. Given that vanilla is commonly propagated vegetatively (vanilla is an orchid, and orchids are known for being a pain to germinate, requiring the presence of specific mycorrhizal fungi), the Taihitian vanilla we grow today could conceivably be the original genotype resulting from the initial hybridization. I'd be interested to know if the odorata and planifolia chromosomes play nice and pair with each other, or if this is actually an alloploid of some kind...

(I suppose one could make a case that vanilla isn't a fruit, but I'm known for being a little flexible with my defnition around here, and it is technically the fruit that is consumed. Basically my definition is: if you eat it, and it's not an agronomic crop, and it's not a vegetable, then it's a fruit (and I've been known to be a tad flexible on the vegetable thing, too). Mostly I just thought it was a cool article.)

Update: I found the actual article, which appears to be freely available here. So there are a few answers to my questions above:
F₁ hybrid?: Almost, but probably not quite
Polyploid?: Some yes (4x), some no (2x)
Single genotype: Nope.

They looked at both a nuclear region and a chloroplast region (which allows them to conclude that V. planifolia is the maternal parent in all cases).

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Huh?

2008-08-31T05:27:00.004-04:00

I am truly shocked to learn (through the wonder of Sitemeter) that this blog is the number one hit if you google "blog sexual exploits" on Google Australia.

(And, it turns, out, just regular plain ol' Google too.)

I'm just suprised that given the fact that the two things the internet seems to have the most of are blogs and porn, that this little internet backwater, which really has very little to do with actual sexual exploits (at least not human ones, which I assume are the ones most people are googling for) is the top hit.

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More David Karp, this time on citrus greening

2008-08-31T05:02:00.004-04:00

Here--before I let another one slip by:

Deadly Pathogen Harms Florida Citrus Groves (New York Times)

I really shouldn't enjoy something so horrible and damaging, but I still kind of get a kick out of the name huanglongbing. I'm so easily amused.

This disease has been hovering on the margins for a while now, having been reported in Miami three years ago, and it was just a matter of time until the panic struck the industry in a big way. And with good reason--unlike citrus canker, which is mostly a cosmetic problem, greening truly ruins fruit and trees. Florida's citrus industry is in bad enough shape already--many growers have sold out to developers in recent years (one grower told me that his kids could work his groves for thirty more years and not make as much money as he could make selling the land, although that was three years ago, before real estate tanked).

This, to me, is a perfect case for transgenics. There are essentially no resistant cultivars, no real obvious cultural solutions (aside from the "plant 'em close together and get what you can before they all die method" which strikes me as dubious and inefficient, and the "plant 'em with guava" method, which seems unlikely but would have the nice side benefit of putting more guava on the market if it did.) Breeding citrus (as I've mentioned before) is not a simple or easy thing to do, and even if it was, varieties capable of truly replacing those currently in place in Florida are almost certainly a couple generations away. Assuming you could convince people to replant at all.

Candy Cots?

2008-08-31T03:32:00.003-04:00

I try hard not to miss linking to any articles by David Karp (The Fruit Detective), but I let this one slip by a while ago:

Sweet Rewards for Apricot Explorers (New York Times)

I would love to see some more apricot options out there. I have had good apricots, but most of them were a long time ago, and unlike many stone fruits, moving some place where they can be grown and buying them from the farmer's market hasn't really helped. Okay, it's helped some, but even 'Blenheim', which I'd heard good things about for years, has repeatedly proven rather unsatisfactory. Virtually all apricots I've tasted recently have been unimpressive. The very best of the Blenheims I've had were sweet, with a touch of tartness, but no distinct flavor beyond that, and no real aroma, either. My two-year-old was sufficiently unimpressed that she decided to chew on a lemon instead (although to be fair, she was upset with the results of that, as well).

It's interesting to me that it's taken this long for such supersweet apricots to be introduced to this country if they've been known for a while. Doesn't it seem like anything extremely sweet has pretty obvious commercial potential? Of course it wasn't that long ago these were locked behind an iron curtain, and the Central Asian republics hadn't been at the forefront of anyone's mind in a while, with the exception of a few botanists and oil and gas tycoons (and maybe Borat fans). I have to say I really don't like the name "Candy Cot"--fruit names really shouldn't be cutesy, in my opinion. This sounds like something a marketing department would come up with, not a fruit breeder. But to each his own, I guess. (And really, "candy" can't be too far off at 26 degrees Brix).

Apricots can be kind of tricky in their climate requirements: they tend to have a fairly high chilling requirement (frequently 700-1200 hours, though Blenheim and a few others are a bit lower--more like 400-500), which excludes them from many warm climate regions, but they also have a tendency to get clobbered by changes in winter temperature, and, most critically, the habit of early flowering means that late frosts can wipe out crops in many of the areas with enough chilling to grow them.

I did see a pair of very low chill hybrid apricots at the University of Florida. These are crosses with a selection of Prunus mume from Thailand. Prunus mume is also known as Japanese apricot (or just 'mume' or 'ume') and although lower chill than the standard apricot (Prunus armeniaca) is generally kind of borderline in as far as chill in Florida itself. I asked Wayne Sherman, the retired stone fruit breeder from U.F., about the hybrids, and he seemed a little non-committal about their prospects--probably not a promising sign, given his almost universal enthusiasm for every other tree I asked him about there.

There are a few other armeniaca x mume hybrids out there, though none of the others are to my knowledge the product of intentional crosses. These include 'Shirokaga' and 'Bungo' (a name which has always amused me). I have no idea what chilling requirements are on these, but an Australian study found 'Bungo' poorly adapted for subtropical conditions.

Propagating date palms

2008-08-29T10:23:00.003-04:00

Date palm propagation via tissue culture:

Iconic palms multiply in modern lab (The National Newspaper, U.A.E.)

Got a bright idea to make the world of date palms a better place? Want a million dirhams? Maybe you should apple for the Sheikh Khalifa International Date Palm Award...

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While we're on the subject of bananas...

2008-08-29T02:39:00.003-04:00

Check this out...

Hawai'ian Plantain (No Fear Entertaining)

In related news, I accidentally made some awesome banana bread recently. (I say "accidentally" because I kept screwing things up--and when I made another loaf a little later and actually was careful, the second loaf was nowhere near as good as the first).

Dan Koeppel's Banana Blog

2008-08-29T02:12:00.006-04:00

One of the many things I've bookmarked with the intention of posting here and then neglected for months is Dan Koeppel's blog about bananas:

BananaBook.org

Dan's the author of a recent book, Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World, which chronicles the many disease and diversity issues facing the banana that we've touched on from time to time here before. (I was excited when the book was announced and had actually hoped to review the book here, but after I bought my Kindle I went on a little Amazon spending binge and now I'm laying off the book buying for a little bit).
The blog deals with many of the same issues as the book, and I would guess it was set up to promote it, but even if you haven't read the book (like me, except for the beginning, thanks to the wonder of the sample chapter) it's still entertaining as a general purpose banana blog.

The site also features a rather inexplicable banana themed picture.

Dan also scores points for dropping me a nice note when I added him as a friend on FaceBook, and I'm a sucker for authors who actually write back. (Granted I only wrote him a sentence or two, and he wrote about the same back).

Update: I'm feeling so positive about this website that I've decided to stick it in the sidebar...

Traditional Ugandan crops disappearing

2008-08-17T17:23:00.004-04:00

I hesitated a bit to post this, but I gave in because I really like the names and descriptions of all the traditional crops, and, whatever the cause, the issue is a serious one.

However I'm a little concerned about what seems a little bit like a misunderstanding of how hybrid seed works. It's common to hear people say "you can't save seed from hybrid varieties". This is true to the extent that these varieties won't come true from seed. However, you CAN get seed from these varieties, and, despite what the story describes, they generally will germinate just fine. The resulting seedlings won't be as uniform as the previous generation, and they probably, as a group, won't be as productive, but you could save seed for generations this way without problems (and in fact, if you did, it would probably eventually homogenize into more of a landrace and become increasingly uniform).

Hybrid varieties are distinct from the so-called "terminator" technology, which actually produced non-viable seeds (and also, despite the hype, was never actually implemented commercially). In theory I suppose it would be possible to find two inbred lines which when combined yield an F₁ plant incapable of producing viable seeds, but it seems pretty unlikely, since genes encouraging sterility would hopefully be bred out of the breeding program.

There is a disturbing trend to characterize modern varieties as inherently pest-prone, fertilizer-intensive, and worse-tasting. They can be all those things, but so can traditional varieties. You get what you select for. I get really sick of the tendency to talk about plant breeding as a process which makes crops into finicky, crappy tasting garbage in exchange for yield. You absolutely can create varieties which taste as good (or better) than traditional varieties, produce more, and resist pests. In fact, plant breeding is the only way to get to that.

With those caveats, enjoy the akatunda akaganda, ebigaaga and obuyindiyindi:

Disappearing delicacies (Monitor Online)

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Eurosemillas' secret California strawberry breeding program?

2008-08-16T22:05:00.001-04:00

I saw this a while back and didn't say anything, but I came across this article again and thought I'd post it, because its ridiculousness amuses me:

Company from Cordoba creates five new varieties of strawberries (FreshPlaza)

Why is this ridiculous? Look at the names:

Palomar
Monterey
Albión
Portola
San Andreas

Sound familiar? Maybe because, through sheer bizarre coincidence, the University of California has released varieties with the exact same names! What a crazy world, huh?

(Except the Spanish seem to have felt the need to put an accent mark on the "o" in Albion--kind of odd, since everyone I know puts the accent on the first syllable...)

Eurosemillas is the international licensee for all the U.C. strawberry varieties, but I'm not sure the rights involved in that include the right to claim to have actually bred the varieties. Although I suspect it pains the European ego slightly to be growing so much of American varieties.

Blighted Hopes

2008-08-16T20:11:00.011-04:00

A review of a book on the fate of the American Chestnut:

Blighted Hopes (American Scientist)

You can buy the book from Amazon here.

July 2008 Fruit Patent Round Up

2008-08-15T03:51:00.005-04:00

Fruit cultivar patent applications published last month....

KIWI:
'Skelton A16' - A moderately early, small-fruited kiwi variety from New Zealand. (You know, my company does it too, but doesn't it defeat the purpose of the patent comparing the new variety to other varieties if you compare it only to your own proprietary varieties, or in this case, breeding selections? I mean, the point is that you can establish identity by making comparisons--but if one interested party controls all plants of the relevant standards, doesn't that make it kind of pointless? (Not that the whole exercise isn't rendered about 98% moot by DNA fingerprinting...)
'Skelton A19' - Another moderately early New Zealand kiwi variety from the same program.
'Skelton X78' - Midseason kiwi variety, also from New Zealand from the same cross as A19.

APPLE:
'Lady Laura' - A limb mutant of 'Cripps Pink' featuring more intense and early coloration.
'Orion' - A Czech triploid variety from the cross of 'Golden Delicious' x 'Otava'.

SWEET CHERRY:
Royal Lynn - An early, low chill, cherry from the Zaiger program in Modesto, CA. From a cross between a proprietary selection and 'Royal Lee'.
PC8007-2 - A firm and flavorful sweet cherry variety from Washington State University.

PRUNUS (COMPLEX HYBRID):
'Coral-Cot' - Another Zaiger hybrid. Talk about complex! [[Prunus armeniaca x ((Prunus salicina x (Prunus salicina x Prunus armeniaca) x (Prunus salicina x Prunus armeniaca))] x Prunus armeniaca] Assuming I transcribed that right. It's something like that, anyhow. Basically, it's a pluot.

NECTARINE:
'Red Ryan' - A low chill Zaiger nectarine from a cross of a breeding selection and 'Red Roy'.

GRAPE:
'Sugrathirtythree- A seedless proprietary variety from the SunWorld program.

STRAWBERRY:
'Palomar' - A short day variety from UC, intended for the southern California production district. A cross of 'Camino Real' x 'Ventana'.

PEAR:
'Todd' - A russetted limb sport of 'Bosc'.

Pointless, yes, but cool.

2008-08-13T00:35:00.001-04:00

Wordle: The Fruit Blog

Generated from the words on the front page of this site, 8/12/08. What do you think the odds are that any one has ever before generated one of these with the word "Crataemespilus" in it?

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The "haw-medlar", aka ×Crataemespilus grandiflora

2008-08-11T00:25:00.007-04:00

I don't know how I missed this when it was posted almost a year ago. It's a spontaneous hybrid between a medlar and a hawthorn.

Haw-medlar identified in Worcestershire (Joan Morgan's Fruit Forum)

So do you blet this thing?

I've actually seen "Crataegomespilus" more than "Crataemespilus". The Great Arbiter, Google, shows a few more hits for the former, but a fair amount of both.

(I'm very disappointed in the spell-checker in this Flock editor—It flags both "medlar" and "blet" as misspellings.)

Update: Nevermind...I figured it out:

×Crataemespilus = true hybrid of Crataegus and Mespilus
+Crategomespilus = graft hybrid chimera of Crataegus and Mespilus

Graft hybrids are cool.

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Sex in melons is ethylene mediated?

2008-08-09T16:04:00.002-04:00

Melons tend do be more vegetables than fruit in my book, but this was interesting enough anyway:

A gene for sexual switching in melons provides clues to the evolution of sex (Genetic Archaeology)

I would not really have expected ethylene to be involved in sex determination. No indication what species, though, which I find frustrating.

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Kiwis on the extremes

2008-08-09T15:47:00.002-04:00

In the comments on a recent message, Brandon mentions wanting to grow kiwis in Florida. Most commercial kiwis are 'Hayward'--but 'Hayward' requires roughly 800 hours of chilling (time between 32° and 45°F). That's probably nearly twice what Gainesville (where he is) is getting.

There are many low-chill varieties, though. All of the following are described as requiring 250 or less chill hours:

Vincent—Produces large crops of smallish brown fruit
Dexter—An Australian variety, medium in size, slightly elongated, quite hairy
Abbott—Small to medium, oval, dark brown, long, dense hairs
Allison—Similar to 'Abbott'
Elmwood—Extremely vigorous, produces large kiwi-shaped fruits.
Bruno—Large, long, cylindrical, dark brown, with short, dense hairs. Light green flesh, good flavor.
Monty—Small to medium fruit, large yields, very late
Tewi—A lower chill seedling of 'Hayward', which it resembles.
Blake—Early maturing, low-chill, and teardrop shaped (supposedly, though I have to say some of the pictures I've seen don't really look it).

Since kiwis require pollination, you'll need to find low chill male, too. Some nurseries will just sell home growers male seedlings, but that's a little risky, because you never know what you might be getting--there's always a chance it won't bloom at the right time, or be horribly disease sensitive, or, in the case of Florida, be too high chill to bloom properly at all. It's probably worth the investment to get a named male cultivar. 'Matua' is that one I most commonly see mentioned for low-chill areas, but Chico No. 3 may work better for really early females.

On the other end of the spectrum is the hardy kiwi (Actinidia arguta) and the "arctic" or "superhardy" kiwi (Actinidia kolomikta). These species can grow in places too cold for the typical kiwis, surviving temperatures down to -25°F, in the case of A. arguta, and -40°F with A. kolomikta. Hardy doesn't necessarily mean winter-proof: hardy kiwis can easily be fooled into breaking bud early, and are sometimes victims of spring frosts.

The fruit isn't what we usually think of as a kiwifruit--a bit more like a grape than a big fuzzy egg, but the flavors are fairly similar, and with relatively thin, fuzz-less skins, you can pop them in your mouth without peeling. Since they don't fit the standard kiwi mold, there have been attempts to market A. arguta under a range of other names: piwifruit, bowervine, tara, yang-tao; but none of these seem to stick.

Some A. arguta cultivars include:
Ananasnaya—A Russian variety whose name means "pineapple-like". (Because hardly anyone who isn't Russian can say the name on the first try, some nurseries call this 'Anna', which is easier to deal with but nowhere near as exotic sounding. Probably the most common variety, it's flavorful and vigorous. There's also a Russian A. kolomikta cultivar under this name, just to confuse things.
Meader—Although I don't know for sure, I'm assuming this was bred by New Hampshire breeder Elwyn Meader, who probably deserves a post of his own one of these days. Supposedly it is available as both a male and a female, which strikes me as odd--I have to assume there are just two different vines with the same name.
Geneva—Supposedly this was propagated from a vine at the NY State Experiment Station in Geneva, NY. I'd like to think this was the female vine growing on the building next to mine when I was there. It very well could be...the only other hardy kiwi there was the male next to it (until the male died). If it's the same thing it's got good flavor and fairly low yields. 'Geneva' is also reported to be a fairly early cultivar.
Issai—A Japanese variety notable for being self-fertile. If I was a hardy-kiwi breeder I'd be all over this one. It's far from perfect, though, as the fruit is small, the vigor is low, and the ripening quite uneven. I've also heard the flavor is uninspiring, and that it's slightly less hardy than some varieties of A. arguta. There are probably at least two self-fertile varieties bopping around under this name.
Ken's Red—Most notable for being, not surprisingly, red. Actually a cross of A. arguta and A. melanandra. Cherry-sized red fruits, sort of squarish.
Dumbarton Oaks—Found on the grounds of Dumbarton Oaks, a Washington, D.C. research institution. Purported to be another early cultivar.

There are assorted males around, but A. deliciosa pollen works for A. arguta so you can double up if you're growing both.

A. kolomikta hasn't been bred much, so the cultivar selection is limited. It's sometimes known as "super-hardy kiwi" or "Arctic Beauty" and is notable for it's incredibly high levels of Vitamin C--20x higher than a similar volume of citrus. Fruit is smaller than hardy kiwi and the vines are harder to establish. They can make nice ornamentals, considering that many have an interesting pink variegation.

Only a couple cultivars are readily available:
Krupnopladnaya—Another beautiful Russian name, this one means large fruit. It's all relative—these fruit are big for A. kolomikta, but not in the general world of kiwi. Generally good and sweet, kind of low in vigor.
Pautske—Good quality, more vigor than Krupnopladnaya.

One Green World has quite a variety of kiwi cultivars, hardy and not (though they don't seem to have any of the low chill ones--they're based in Oregon, after all), though they have what I consider the annoying habit of renaming many of the Russian cultivars and not giving the real names, making it difficult to know anything about what you're buying beyond what they tell you. (The also call all the kiwis Actinidia polygama, which rubs taxonomy geeks like me the wrong way). Still, they've had a pretty good track record with me, and the offer most of the higher chill varieties listed here, and a few more. I don't know a source for many of the low chill varieties (mostly because I haven't spent as much time in low chill places), but Top Tropicals has Vincent, paired with a pollinator, Tomuni, and Rolling River Nursery has Elmwood and Blake as well as some hardy kiwis.

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Plant breeding journal club

2008-08-06T01:23:00.002-04:00

The Global Partnership Initiative for Plant Breeding Capacity Building is starting an electronic plant breeding journal club. The first installment is due tomorrow!

The GIPB has had a promising looking website for a while, but its really been kind of short on actual content so far. I'm hoping this is changing.

Anyway, there's a reasonable chance if you're here that you might be the sort that would be at least a little interested in discussing a plant breeding paper or two. If so, register and and join in. I'll be there!

Plant Breeding e-Journal Club (GIPB)

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Urban pomology takes root

2008-08-05T23:20:00.001-04:00

I don't think many people really appreciate how much in the way of fruit you can fit in a small backyard or even a patio or rooftop. I'm guilty of it too...I spend a fair amount of time bemoaning not having room for vast orchards or vineyards, and fantasizing about owning acres. But the fact is, a relatively small yard can provided a phenomenal amount of fruit for a few people, and even if you don't have a yard, you can do remarkably well with pots, provided you have some sun and a place to park them (some things will even do well indoors with a sunny window, including pomegranate, figs, and some citrus, although they are rarely as productive as they would be outdoors). In our old house, I had dozens of strawberry varieties (including a few small seedling populations), some blackberries, a Chinotto orange, and an incredibly productive lemon tree, all in pots on either the patio or the front sidewalk.

Backyards, Beware: An Orchard Wants Your Spot (New York Times)

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SunHerald.com : Notes from a fig fancier

2008-07-30T03:07:00.001-04:00

It's been a long time since I had a fresh fig. I keep seeing them in the store, but they're so expensive they never seem worth it.

Notes from a fig fancier (Sun Herald)

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A mountain of kiwi genes

2008-07-30T03:05:00.001-04:00

Scientists from Hortresearch in New Zealand have just released a serious pile of genetic sequence data from kiwifruit (Actinidia deliciosa). 130,000 ESTs, to be exact. (EST stands for Expressed Sequence Tag--this is sequence from individual genes that are being expressed at the moment the extraction took place, transcribed from the mRNA.) This has to be among the largest single releases of sequences for a horticultural crop. Kudos to them for sharing with the rest of us. (Of course, really, who else is doing enough kiwi molecular genetics work to use this besides the New Zealanders?)

Scientists detail kiwifruit genes (Business Day)

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Hardy fruit tree recommendations

2008-07-30T02:56:00.001-04:00

Nothing earth shattering here, just a short article on fruit tree varieties for the far north. I kind of feel like I'm a cold-climate kind of guy, but in reality the places I've lived for the last seven years probably haven't had a month worth of frosts between them in that time. Which might explain why I don't know a thing about some of these varieties.

Hardy Fruit Trees (Star Tribune)

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